Under current design standards, conventional retaining walls and bridge abutments are classified in the same category as retaining structures and the same seismic design procedures are therefore applied. Their dynamic response characteristics nonetheless are quite different. A series of shaking table model tests were performed therefore for this study in order to evaluate the dynamic response characteristics of each structure. The experiments revealed that external forces such as inertial force and earth pressure acting on these structures during shaking were quite different. Based on these test results, proposals were made for a new set of seismic design procedures for each structure considering the abovementioned response characteristics.