Analysis of the Components of Aesthetic Psychologyin Karst Cave Adventure Tourism
喀斯特洞穴探险旅游的审美心理要素分析

With the development of human society, caves are no longer habitats but one of theaesthetic objects. International cave adventure tourism is booming, greatly benefiting worldcommunication and economic development. Its development, however, seems to be far away frommature in China. Analyzing the components of aesthetic psychology in karst cave adventure wouldbe useful for developing its tourism. To understand what types of components of aestheticpsychology are involved in the karst cave adventure activities and how they work, this study firstmakes a systematic analysis on the components of aesthetic psychology in karst cave adventureactivities, indicating that aesthetic psychology is an activity of value judgment in aesthetic activity.In the karst cave adventure, the aesthetic activity involves almost all aesthetic components, i.e.,aesthetic perception, aesthetic imagination, aesthetic comprehension and aesthetic emotion. It wasalso found that the uniqueness of karst cave adventure not only breeds the aesthetic sense in theheart of the tourists through maximally stimulating their visual and auditory organs, but alsodirectly impacts the challengers'mind through spurring their ultimate physical strength and skillsto achieve a higher-level pleasure. In the process of aesthetic activities in karst cave adventure, thefour components mentioned above interplay with each other, giving the adventurers the aestheticexperience at a variety of levels. Once the cavers enter a cave, he or she will be impressed by thesounds of water, the color of rocks, the creatures, the feeling of touching and so on. Therefore, theywill enjoy the lower-level aesthetic experience. When they are not satisfied with this, they oftenchallenge more difficult activities to acquire higher-level aesthetic experience. To understand thecavers'preference of esthetic experience in the real life, the present study also conducts a surveyamong sixty cavers by means of questionnaire. Through the survey, it was found that the caversshow varying preferences and needs in their cave esthetic activities. Some likes less difficult caveadventure, while the other prefers more difficult ones. But almost all people deem it indispensablefor a cave worthy of the adventure to enjoy landscape beauty. On the basis of this, different cavershave different preferences. It is suggested that caves of different degrees of difficulty for differentcavers can be developed.