Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Impairment of mental wellbeing in urban areas can be explained through landscape experience. Interactions with urban nature have found to positively influence wellbeing through landscape experience. However, research has focussed on the sense of vision, while humans are multisensory beings in essence. The role of olfaction in everyday experiences of people has received too little attention. This explorative study focusses on the influences of urban nature on the olfactory urban landscape experience and wellbeing. A mixed methodology of semi-structured interviews and questionnaires was used to understand perceived olfactory quality and olfactory landscape experience. Participants clearly experienced the olfactory environment different with urban nature present. It was found that urban nature positively influences perceived olfactory quality and increases the positive affective responses to the olfactory environment. Judgement of smells were largely based on associations. Smells of nature were associated with health, freshness, higher environmental quality, and evoked feelings of calmness, happiness and a feeling of being away from the city. Smells of nature contributed to olfactory landscape preference through the evocation of positive effective responses and fostering an experience of nature. Further, smells of nature evoked many deep memories, resulting in positive judgements and feelings. However, further research in different cultural, temporal and spatial contexts is necessary to agree with, adjust or refute the perceptual patterns found. Above all, my study provides new insights in the olfactory dimension of multisensory landscape experience and human-nature interactions and opens a call for more in-depth and in-situ research to multisensory landscape experience.