Expert Opinion Dimensions of Rural Landscape Quality in Xiangxi, Hunan, China: Principal Component Analysis and Factor Analysis

Abstract

Scholars and planning/design professionals are interested in the quantitative, metric properties influencing the quality and assessment of rural landscape space. These metrics are important for guiding rural planning, design, and construction of cultural rural environments. Respondents and metrics from four sampled villages (Qixin, Hangsha, Yanpai Xi, and Lvdong) in the Xiangxi District of Hunan Province in China were examined, employing statistical principal component analysis and factor analysis methods to understand the identifying properties concerning planning and design features of these rural mountain village landscape spaces. The two approaches reveal different aspects from the same variables. Through factor analysis and rotation, four general dimensions were revealed explaining approximately 62% of the variance: a settlement and environmental axis, an intangible culture axis, a productive landscape axis, and a transportation and public space axis, supporting the standing notion that the variables were ordinated across four dimensions in these mountain villages and occupied an elliptical plane that was different than the predicted space occupied by nearby cites. In contrast, principal component analysis revealed that the variables could be grouped into one latent dimension explaining 48% of the variance and revealing an alternative interpretation and spatial plot of the sites.