A Study on the Psychological Evaluation of Tourism Landscape Images in Hiroshima A Psychological Evaluation by Korean Subjects

Abstract

In this study, similarities and differences in psychological evaluations of sightseeing scenes in Hiroshima by Korean, Chinese and Japanese subjects were examined to identify new and attractive features for foreigners. Forty scenes were chosen as the stimuli for the psychological experiments; these were sourced from sightseeing homepages in Hiroshima Prefecture. In the evaluation for ′Hope to visit′, scenes that largely contained artificial elements received lower evaluations. In contrast, scenes that depicted nature and Japanese gardens received higher evaluations. Furthermore, no correlation was found between ′Hope to visit′ and ′Similarity to Japan′. Scenes depicting characteristics were preferred to typical Japanese scenes, and subjects recognised the similarity between Japanese and Korean scenes, which explains their lack of desire to visit. Similarities and differences among the three subject groups were determined; however, since the subjects were living in Japan, they might have obtained Japanese knowledge and experiences. Therefore, further study is required to compare the results with evaluations of people who have not left their native countries.

Keywords

• tourism landscape
• sightseeing scene
• cross-cultural comparison