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. 2017 Jul 18;14(7):800.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph14070800.

Management Effectiveness of a Secondary Coniferous Forest for Landscape Appreciation and Psychological Restoration

Norimasa Takayama  1 , Akio Fujiwara  2 , Haruo Saito  3 , Masahiro Horiuchi  4
Affiliations

Management Effectiveness of a Secondary Coniferous Forest for Landscape Appreciation and Psychological Restoration

Norimasa Takayama et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

We investigated the influence of forest management on landscape appreciation and psychological restoration in on-site settings by exposing respondents to an unmanaged, dense coniferous (crowding) forest and a managed (thinned) coniferous forest; we set the two experimental settings in the forests of the Fuji Iyashinomoroi Woodland Study Center. The respondents were individually exposed to both settings while sitting for 15 min and were required to answer three questionnaires to analyze the psychological restorative effects before and after the experiment (feeling (the Profile of Mood States), affect (the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule), and subjective restorativeness (the Restorative Outcome Scale). To compare landscape appreciation, they were required to answer another two questionnaires only after the experiment, for scene appreciation (the semantic differential scale) and for the restorative properties of each environment (the Perceived Restorativeness Scale). Finally, we obtained these findings: (1) the respondents evaluated each forest environment highly differently and evaluated the thinned forest setting more positively; (2) the respondents' impressions of the two physical environments did not appear to be accurately reflected in their evaluations; (3) forest environments have potential restorative effects whether or not they are managed, but these effects can be partially enhanced by managing the forests.

Keywords: Shinrin-yoku; forest management; perceived restorativeness scale; positive and negative affect schedule; profile of mood states; restorative outcome scale; semantic differential method.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Forest management and our health.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Locations of the research sites.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The experimental plots. The authors modified this figure from the figure on the Fuji Iyashinomori Woodland Study Center’s website (http://www.uf.a.u-tokyo.ac.jp/fuji).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Experimental procedure. The same procedure was used in the both thinned and crowding forest sessions.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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