Browsing by Subject "university student"

It has been found by multiple research projects that subjective and objective measurements of greenery often do not match when measured for the same area. Some even say that this is due to these measurements considering different attributes of the greenery. However, one important factor to consider in this equation is the impact of personal characteristics of the people providing subjective greenery measurements. Factors such as age, gender, worldview and education level have been found to have an impact on how and how much people perceive greenery. As there seem to be very few studies regarding this topic which focus on people with a higher education, the participants of this study are all university students from four of the largest cities or areas in Finland: the Helsinki Capital Region, Tampere, Oulu and Turku. One of the objectives of this study are to see whether participants perceive the same amount of urban greenery as the objective amount, calculated using the “normalized difference vegetation index”. Another objective is to research whether subjective perception is dependent on whether the participant is a resident of the city, for which they are estimating the urban greenery percentage. This study also looks into whether there is a correlation between age and urban greenery perception or difference between genders regarding the perception of urban greenery. The results show that the participants tend to overestimate the amount of greenery, and that residents always perceive their home city to be greener than at least some non-residents. No significant connections were found in the tests concerning age and gender. This highlights the importance of considering personal characteristics and perceptions of people when developing new green spaces.