In the present study, in order to investigate the psychological effect of ornamental foliage plants on human being, the authors carried out the following two experiments.
The experiment (1) was the evaluation of the impression of ornamental foliage plants. The authors obtained the information about the impression of sixteen kinds of ornamental foliage plants through questionnaires from one hundred and two students (seventy-eight male and twenty-four female) who served as subjects. As the results, the ornamental foliage plants which were evaluated as “restful” were Cupressus macrocarpa “Gold Crest”, Ficus benjamina “Rich” and Dracaena fragrans “Massangeana”. The ornamental foliage plants which were evaluated as “refreshing” were Chrysalidocapus lutescens and Dracaena fragrans “Massangeana”.
The experiment (2) was the psychological rating of the rooms with ornamental foliage plants by means of semantic differential method. Sixteen types of rooms without plants or with ornamental foliage plants were rated by sixteen students (eight male and eight female) using twenty-two SD scales and factor analysis was performed. As the results, the first factor “evaluation”, the second factor “activity” and the third factor “energy” were extracted by the factor analysis. The rooms with plants were evaluated higher than the rooms without plants in the first factor “evaluation” and the second factor “activity”. As for the arrangement of plants, the rooms with plants interspersed in the room were evaluated a little higher in the first factor “evaluation” than the rooms with plants in line inside the window.
