Study On Recreationists’ Experience Of Urban Human Settlements Environment

Recreational activities are increasing rapidly in the city. It is very important to people who live and travel in the urban space that they can enjoy the high-quality environment and recreational experience.Individuals gain the recreational experience from the overall urban environment rather than dispersed scenic spots. It is necessary to carry out in-depth research on how individuals experience the urban environment for understanding the true face of human settlements environment in their mind. Based on the recreationists’micro perspective, this paper conduct a systematic study on recreationists’ experience of urban environment. It takes Wuhan which is a typical representative of China’s urban human settlements environment as case study area and it choses hybrid method of quantitative and qualitative research according to the research subject’s characteristics.This dissertation comprises three sections with nine chapters:Section one is the foundation of this study and includes chapter oneand two. This section provides the answers of two basic questions.(1) Why the problem is worth of researching? Chapter one is an introduction of the research background and significance that are the answers of the first question.(2) What have done about the problem by national and international scholars? Chapter two is the answer of the second question which reviews and comments relevant academic literature on urban human settlement environment, recreational activities and environmental experience of recreationist.Section two is the main part of this dissertation with the third, fourth, fifthsixth and seventh chapters. The logical train of this part is as the following:(1) designing the research;(2) constructing the theoretical basis, putting forward the core concept and setting up an analytical framework;(4) conducting the concrete analysis.Chapter three is the research design which elaborated how the research carried on. It involves introductions on research target, contents, methodologies, procedures and study case area.Some basic theories were introduced in the chapter four and a syncretic theoretical model had been proposed based on the theory review as to understand recreationist’s experience of urban environment. According the theoretical framework, some core concepts of this study were also proposed in this chapter. Then a systematical paradigm of recreational psychophysical field was created and an analytic framework was been proposed subsequently, including experience contents, mechanism and procedures.In chapter five, with the utility of quantitative and qualitative analysis, the urban environmental experience contents were classified clearly, which includes natural environment, space and landscape, social atmosphere, recreational public service and the recreational image of city. Chapter six focused on the mechanism of recreationist’s environmental experience with the method of content analysis. It was indicated that there were three interrelated dimensions, which are sensory experience, exploration of landscape meaning and aesthetic sensibility.The qualitative research was conducted to analyze the recreational procedures of urban environmental experience by a semi-structured dynamic self-reporting approach and the use of NVivo software in chapter seven. The three stages of recreationists’experience, which are environmental expectation, environmental experience and environmental evaluation, were analyzed and contrasted one by one through case studying as well as satisfaction of recreationists in different stage.Section three is the part of implication, application and further study, which includes chapter eightand nine. In chapter eight, the Wuhan’s recreational image in recreationists’ mind were summarized by synthesizing all the foregoing analysis about the case study city. In order to achieve a win-win goal of high-quality recreational experience and beautiful environment, this chapter suggested the basic conception and route selection of human settlements environment optimization and the specific strategies of human settlements environment optimization of Wuhan city. Some conclusions and the author’s innovative work were summarized in chapter nine. In addition, some key points of further study work on this topic were suggested in this chapter.Through the combing and analysis of recreation experience system of urban environment, this dissertation draws the following main conclusions:(1)The recreational psychophysical field is the combination of urban environment and individual spirit world.It is expression of the human-environmental relationship in individual recreation purpose.(2)Basic environmental supply of urban human settlements is an important platform for the recreationist’s experience. The contents of urban environment experience can be classified into six categories of natural environment, space and landscape, social atmosphere, recreational public service and the recreational image of city by the formation of human spirit-body dimension. In the other hand, they can be classified into three categories of basic supply of recreational environment, attractive supply of recreational environment and supportive supply of recreational environment by the influence categories of urban environment on the recreationists. The basic supply of recreational environment is the very important underpinning for recreationist’s experience.(3)Demand of recreationist’s experience in urban environment is the driving force of the recreational generalization of urban space. Some urban space, which has no recreational function originally, has become recreational space under the impetus of the recreational activities. The flowing space and landscape also have been through the process of the recreational generalization.(4)Recreationists anticipate experiencing a sense of kindness and orderin the urban environment. The attitude, language and action of "the host" in the eyes of Recreationists determined the quality of recreationist’s experience of kindness, the sense of order and the atmosphere of urban space or place is also an important part of their positive experience of urban environment.(5)The mechanism of recreationist’s environmental experience involves perception, symbolic interpretation and aesthetic value judgments. The mechanism running relationship is as the following interpretation:recreationist perceives functional environment from urban space and refines the overall evaluation of environmental aesthetics. The space perception is the basic part of experience, experience the perception of functional environment in urban area is the prominent part of experience, and the aesthetic evaluation is the deepening of experience.(6)The matching between environmental features and recreationist’s emotional arousal levels can produce different effects. Recreationist is looking forward to a low-intermediate level of arousal and a high level of happiness by experience of urban recreational environment. The recreational landscape and atmosphere that have significant difference with recreationist’s daily life is likely to make recreationist generate positive environmental experience.(7)Recreational prefer "harmoniously-diverse" and "authentic" recreational environment of city. The "harmoniously-diverse" environmental preference is often used as an indicator to judge the recreational value of urban space. The recreationist’s expectation of the open space in the city refers to being able to experience a natural, native, unprocessed state of environment. Such urban environment means that both residents and tourists can achieve equal benefits of experience from the environment.Main innovations of this dissertation are likely to be as the following:(1) proposing a paradigm of from a recreational psychophysical field from a holistic perspective,(2) for the first time utilizing the mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze the recreationists’ experience.(3)achieving the perspective transformation of human settlement environment research via systemic study on the content, mechanism and process of recreationists’ experience in the urban leisure environment from the micro perspective.