Effects of Visual Indicators on Landscape Preferences

Abstract

Many previous works suggested that visual indicators could be used to predict landscape preferences. Most works, however, judged the visual indicators by a subjective method, which was criticized for lack of standardization in methodology, nontransparent application of values, and lack of replicability. This paper studied the relationships between landscape preferences and 10 visual indicators, among which seven indicators were evaluated by an objective measurement. Another three indicators (years of history heritages, number of landscape elements, and impression) were evaluated by a subjective method because they depend on a human’s perception. The landscape preferences were judged by undergraduate students based on the stimuli of 30 photographs taken in the two cities of Hangzhou and Suzhou in the east of China. The results show that students prefer landscape with historical heritage of 200–600 years, moderate impression, approximately 60% of open land cover and 45% of water body cover, lower plant cover, more heterogeneities, and higher naturalness; no significantly statistical relationships exist between students’ preference scores and the ratio of disturbed area, building cover, or topographic variation cover. These results were confirmed by another six photographs; and last, some suggestions for landscape design were given.