Comparing the Emotions and Nostalgic Landscapes Experience between Different Taiwanese Generations
Date Issued
2014
Date
2014
Author(s)
Hung, Wei-Shan
Abstract
Nostalgia is evoked by the stimulus related with the individual’s life in the past, such as people, events, scenes, or the impersonal and remote histories, which has also been defined by the bittersweet yearning from the past. Recently, nostalgia has become a dominant theme in many fields, such as geography, landscape, and medicine. This tendency to value anything old makes nostalgia applicable to marketing as well. For instance, the managers of recreation area usually try to create a nostalgic landscape or to design some activities related to the nostalgic theme. Although there has been ample research works on nostalgic issues, most of them were focused on nostalgic landscapes. However, life experience and its connotation which is diverse among different generations were rarely explored. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to explore the characters of nostalgic landscapes. Also, the different perceptions about attribute, affect, and experience of nostalgic landscape among different generations were also compared in this study. The research method was based on qualitative research. The survey was conducted in November 2011 at several major stations of the Mass Rapid Transit system in Taipei City, Taiwan. A total of 122 respondents were interviewed. The data analysis was based on a constant comparative analysis to construct emergent sets of themes from the interview transcripts. This study based on previous literatures, the respondents were divided into four generations: Traditional generation, Baby boom generation, X generation and Y generation. The result revealed that all generations indicate “campus landscape”, “leisure landscape” and “residential landscape” as nostalgic landscape. “Residential landscape” was mostly indicated and memorized among all the nostalgic landscape. This shows that all generations in Taiwan are strongly bound to their residence. Moreover, the residential landscape described by each generation is the living environment in their childhood. Among the four generations, residential landscape was mostly emphasized by the Traditional generation. The Traditional generation especially cherishes the memory of living in the least developed and less polluted countryside which they believed that the younger generation was difficult to understand. The second most indicated and memorized nostalgic landscape is “leisure landscape”, which are the landscapes interviewees accessed during their travel or leisure time. The third most indicated and memorized nostalgic landscape is “campus landscape”. Except for the Traditional generation, “campus landscape” is indicated by Baby boom generation, X generation and Y generation. Since the campus landscape is usually the same, the elements and styles of the campus landscape described by the interviewees are similar. This study also found that the common nostalgic experiences among each generation are: “leisure experience”, “simple and unsophisticated life” and “social support”. Regarding “leisure experience”, each generation all indicates the experience of residential pastime or traveling. With respect to “simple and unsophisticated life”, it is the nostalgic experience mostly indicated by X generation, Baby boom generation and Traditional generation. The interviewees memorize the simple and humble living environment in their childhood. Regarding “social support”, it is the experience of being support by family and friend. The younger generation, Y and X generation, mentions this experience more often. In the analysis of each generation’s emotions to the nostalgic landscape, it is found that the emotions associated with the nostalgic landscape include both positive and negative emotions. For most interviewees, nostalgia is associated with pleasant while only few interviewees feel sad that time has changed and the good old days are gone. This result indicates that the nostalgic landscape can bring mixed emotions which the positive emotion plays the majority part. Lastly, this study analyzes the different perceptions about attribute, affect, and experience of nostalgic landscape among different generation. Take residential landscape for instance, it is the landscape commonly memorized by each generation, however, Y generation links it with “leisure experience” while other three generations recall experience of the “simple and unsophisticated life”. Accordingly, for each generation, their perceptions about attribute, affect, and experience of nostalgic landscape are different.
Subjects
Nostalgic emotion
Experience
Generation classification
Type
thesis
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