Abstract
The appearance of cattle grazing abandoned paddy fields can be used to evaluate attitudes towards this land-use change. The semantic differential (SD) method was used families of a university student to evaluate and compare attitudes towards five types of rural landscape: pasture, pasture grazed by cattle, rice paddy field, abandoned paddy field converted to pasture and abandoned paddy field converted to pasture grazed by cattle. Cattle grazing abandoned paddy fields were determined to have a positive effect on the landscape. However, all grazing cattle created a negative attitude because of the unclean appearance of the landscape. Grazing cattle at high stocking rates in small areas could create a negative attitude because of the oppressive appearance of the landscape. The acceptance of grazing cattle was lower if the animals ware newly introduced to the landscape.
