*4.3. Analysis of Tourists' Perceptions*

The tourists' perceptions of the park are shown in Figure 7. The results show that among Olmsted's expected perceptions, the park was mostly "picturesque" and "healing". Among other feelings, the positive evaluation of "fascinating" was cited the most, followed by the evaluation of the park as "funny".


**Figure 7.** Distribution of tourists' perceptions (Source: created by authors).

Among Olmsted's expectations, the proportion of people who thought that the park was "picturesque" was the largest, reaching 10.22%. The comments mainly focused on the overall view of the park—"Everything is picturesque" and "I had no idea the park was this picturesque". Secondly, the park was considered "healing", "spacious" and "quiet", accounting for 7.00%, 6.08% and 5.35% of evaluations, respectively. The beautiful landscape of the park allows people to escape from the hustle and bustle of the city—"It's a safe and peaceful place to get away from the hustle and slow down and enjoy the scene". It was also seen as a kind of healing space for New York City—"This is how NY gets back to face and hearing from all the hustle and bush in the city". Finally, the park was evaluated as "natural", accounting for 1.9%. Central Park is considered an oasis in New York City—"Visited here in November and was blown away by the natural beauty of this park".

"Fascinating" accounted for the largest proportion of comments, at 41.93%. These evaluations contained a series of positive words, such as "great, wonderful, amazing, awesome, fame, popular, gorgeous, charging ... ". This comprehensive evaluation of the park shows that the overall perception of Central Park is good. Tourists also used words such as love and happy (6.95%), fun (9.99%) and reminiscent (2.70%)—"Row the boat! Romantic and fun experience!", "The park has so many intelligent and movie memorable places within ... so glad we came here". Here, the description of "fun" is beyond Olmsted's expectations, being cited via words such as "exploring, adventurous, intruding, interesting, fun, attractive, magnetic, characteristic . . . ".

In addition, negative comments accounted for 5.13% overall. Tourists thought that the environment of the park was dirty and messy—"It was altogether dirty and fluent with rush". The second-most common was "disappointing", accounting for 1.65%, and this view was mainly related to the maintenance and management of the park environment. "Central Park was a little dismantling. A little run down with a lot of grey instead of the lush green I was used to". In addition, a few of the assessments mentioned that the park was expensive (1.09%), mainly because of such features as the carts in the park.

#### *4.4. Analysis of the Relationship between Tourists' Focus on Landscape Elements and Activities*

The relationship between tourists' focus on landscape elements and activities is shown in Figure 8, where the thickness of the lines represents the intensity of the correlation. The results show that Olmsted's envisioned activities (walking, sightseeing, relaxing and enjoying, and eating) had the highest correlation with the landscape elements (waterscapes, views, and trees) mentioned in his design theory, followed by biking and running in terms of sports activities. Among other landscape elements, animals, sculptures and playgrounds were the most relevant to activities.

**Figure 8.** Sankey diagram of the relationship between the favored landscape elements and activities (Source: drawn by authors).

Among the landscape elements expected by Olmsted to be important, waterscapes were seen as the most relevant to activities. In the comments on the waterscape, 1014 mentioned "walking", 939 mentioned "sightseeing", 685 mentioned "eating", and 519 mentioned "relaxing and enjoying". The well-designed waterscapes could stimulate activities in the park, and people were more likely to pay attention to the waterscape when carrying out certain activities. The lake was a place that people often chose when rowing, eating, walking, skating, or undertaking other activities, "so many places to see so many different experiences Boating, eating by the lake and walking around to see the beautiful scene". The exquisite fountains were also considered good spots for tourists to rest and enjoy the scenery. These became the most attractive scenic spots in the minds of tourists, "Bethesda Fountain attracts my attention most. I come here every time". Next, the overall view of the park was also relevant to the activities. When "walking" (671), "sightseeing" (632) and "relaxing and enjoying" (427), tourists pay attention to their view of the park. "Spend hours walking around. Breaking taking views day and night". In this beautiful environment, it was easy for tourists to unconsciously participate in more activities, and partake in quiet entertainment in the picturesque scenery. Trees were also closely related to specific activities. The tree-lined paths were places in which people could enjoy the beautiful scenery and walk—"Plenty of beautiful park views as you walk through tree lined paths". The big trees in the park were also ideal places for people to relax and enjoy—"I find that

just being amongst the towering trees and the beautiful foliage revitalizes me and brings me peace and grounds me".

Among the other landscape elements, animals were the most relevant to the chosen activities. Of the comments on animals, 608 were related to "walking", 572 to "sightseeing" and 313 to "enjoying and relaxing". As a living element of the park, they easily attracted tourists' attention. Sculptures, playgrounds and other artificial facilities were also highly related to activities. This shows that the park needed not only a picturesque static landscape, but also diverse facilities to increase interest and enrich people's activities in the park, and to enhance the interactions between people and the landscape, as well as between people.

In actual design, designers should coordinate plants, buildings, terrain changes and the proportion of water, as well as balance the relationship between natural and artificial elements, and consider more activities and interactions to offer people a rich range of emotions [31].
