A Repertory Grid Test of the Claim That Sense of Landscape Naturalness Is Specific to Culture

Abstract

Repertory grid technique was used to test the claim that sense of landscape naturalness is socially constructed and culturally relative, and the reverse claim that sense of landscape naturalness is underlain by universals of human thought. Participants made judgments of sameness and difference concerning elements in a standard landscape of nine elements. Sample groups represented three cultures at extremes along a continuum of ideology concerning human relations with nature: Euro-Canadian at one end, Vuntut Gwich'in and north Baffin Inuit at the other. Results were consistent with the universalist but not the relativist hypothesis. Although principal factors for the three culture samples differ slightly, a common factor is nested within the variation, and it corresponds to the Euro-Canadian construct (natural x man-made). The study has implications for environmental education and environmental planning.