EXPLORING THE EFFECT OF DEMOGRAPHIC ELEMENTS ON THE EVALUATION OF THE SCENIC BEAUTY OF VARIOUS LANDFORMS – PRELIMINARY RESULTS

This article reports on a piece of research which attempts to take 32 different images of landforms and to show how different classes of people perceive or ‘value ’ the scenic beauty of these landforms. This is an interesting question and one which bears research. In this case, the term ‘scenic beauty ’ refers to the public preference of various forms of the earth’s relief. It is a fi gure which, even though depends on various subjective factors, aims to quantify the general preference of the public for various landforms. A questionnaire survey takes place to investigate the public preference, using a sample of 221 persons in the area of Athens and Piraeus, and the city suburbs. This area concentrates a very large proportion of Greece’s population and can ensure variety in terms of social and demographic status of the sampled population. The means used to demonstrate the various forms of reliefs are 32 digital relief images, created using an algorithm developed for this purpose. The representa-tive selection of the sample of digital images took place after the classifi cation of the forms of relief in Lefka Ori mountain range in Crete. The questionnaire comprised of 11 questions describing the person questioned in relation to the environment he/she has experienced or knows and his/her contact with the countryside. Each question corresponded to a factor that had been generalised in categories. Following this, a primary statistical analysis of variance was carried out for each of the factors examined and some preliminary results are reported. Little research in this specifi c area has been done and it is interesting to explore further the way people with different social backgrounds react or perceive the various landforms