Interethnic Preferences for Landscape Change

Abstract

Interethnic and cross-cultural preferences for and perceptions of landscape change have been recurrent subjects of interest in environmental psychology, environmental sociology, and landscape architecture research. Cross-cultural studies of Asian, European, and Euro-American perceptions of landscape condition are fairly common, but few if any studies have compared aboriginal and nonaboriginal perceptions of a range of controlled landscape conditions. A sample of aboriginal and non-aboriginal residents of British Columbia’s upper Skeena Valley indicates considerable interethnic consistency in preference evaluations of a series of photo-realistic landscape change scenarios. Reflection on the cultural and motivational determinants of landscape preference indicates a need for more explicit operational definitions of the terms culture and community of interest in landscape research.