This study investigates how changes in the amount of three elements commonly manipulated in public space designtrees, bushes and seats-affect users' perceptions, impressions and intended behavior on privately owned public open spaces-POPOS. The study uses simulated immersive virtual environments presented with a head-mounted display. Potential users evaluated several design variations of four different POPOS of Tokyo, Japan, using 21 different semantic differential and two rating scales. The effects of tree cover ratio, tree height, bushes ratio and seating ratio in five intended activities, nine impressions and six physical scales are described, as well as the relationship between different scales. The effects on willingness to pay and stay duration are also provided. The study's results exhibited a positive effect of seat and tree cover ratio across several scales. Bushes ratio and tree height had minor effects on some scales, as did the interactions between tree cover ratio and tree height and between tree and seating ratio. No interaction was found between tree height and seating ratio. Increasing seating ratio increased willingness to pay and stay duration. Differences among sites are discussed.
This paper seeks to determine which physical elements of privately owned public spaces affect users' impressions, which characteristics of these elements are noticed, and what impressions they cause. The study is based on a caption evaluation and semantic differential survey of 12 public spaces in the center of Tokyo. Ten participants were surveyed for each space, and 1494 of the obtained entries were analyzed. The semantic differential survey was then cross-referenced with density measures to evaluate the effect of physical elements' densities on participants' impressions.It was found that the physical elements that caught users' attention were greenery, street furniture, the building, the sidewalk and the space itself. From all of the elements, tree coverage density was the best predictor of desire to stay and rest activities in the space. A logistic regression analysis of each activity by tree density is also provided.
This study purposed to discover whether or not academic libraries reflect these changing roles. We selected K University as the research target and surveyed user satisfaction of materials, staff services, facilities, electronic devices, media, and so on. The research findings are as follows: 1) the frequency of library visits of University K was on the high side, 2) the primary purpose of using the academic library was associated with learning or reading, therefore, the most used library spaces were related to that, 3) the most used library materials were 'general books', the most unused were 'reference books', 4) the most preferred way to obtain needed materials when failing to find wanted materials was 'Contact librarian'. A similar phenomenon occurred in terms of facility use, 5) university K's users were usually satisfied with the loan policy, 6) the rate of users who don't know whether there is user education was very high, the rate of users who have no experience with user education was extremely low. These research findings can be referenced by library management to improve libraries' service quality and take advantage of complex spatial configurations.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.