Measuring attitudes towards historic gardens: development and validation of the Garden Heritage Scale

Historic gardens and parks are special parts of cultural heritage. On the one hand, such areas can be seen as historic monuments. On the other hand, they can play a crucial role for environmental protection. However, previous environmental education research did not pay much attention to historic greenery. One reason may be the lack of suitable measurement tools. The purpose of the current study was to develop and validate the Garden Heritage Scale (GHS). This novel psychometric instrument may be used for measuring attitudes towards historic gardens. It shows sufficient internal validity, confirmed by two factor analyses with different samples (n = 233;183). Convergent and discriminant validity proved to be adequate as well as retest-reliability and internal consistency. Since the scale showed sufficient quality, it can be recommended for further research.

Daniel Emge, Matthias Winfried Kleespies, Volker Wenzel