The Humanmade Paradise: Exploring the Perceived Dimensions and Their Associations with Aesthetic Pleasure for Liu Yuan, a Chinese Classical Garden

Abstract

Investigating how people perceive Chinese Classical Gardens (CCGs) and their appeal are important issues of landscape studies. By considering the Liu-Yuan Garden, we developed a measurement instrument to investigate the perceived dimensions of landscape appreciation. Based on literature review, the descriptive items to measure how people perceived Liu-Yuan Garden were developed. Then, the explorative factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were employed, and six dimensions were extracted and validated including “Adoration”, “Nostalgia”, “Liveliness”, “Exquisiteness”, “Hedonic Value”, and “Placeness”. Finally, the Ordinary Linear Regression method was employed to estimate how the aesthetic appreciation is influenced by these perceived dimensions. The result revealed that four of these dimensions were significantly correlated with aesthetic pleasure. The influences of these perceived dimensions on aesthetic pleasure were measured and compared. The results indicated that “Placeness” provided the most important influence on aesthetic pleasure, whereas “Liveliness” was the least influential of the four related dimensions.