Effects of seasonality on visual aesthetic preference

Abstract

Seasonality is a typical feature of landscapes in temperate regions. Seasonality’s effects on visual aesthetic quality (VAQ) are widely recognised but not well understood. To address this gap, 10 sample sites were selected to represent the diversity of urban green spaces in Xuzhou, eastern China, which has a typical temperate monsoon climate. Photographs of the 10 sites were acquired in eight typical months to capture seasonality. Online surveys were used to evaluate the VAQ of the photographs. The mean value of the coefficient of variation of 16 landscape characteristics of a site during the seasons was used to represent seasonal diversity. The results indicated that: (1) the autumn landscape was the most preferred, and the winter landscape was the least preferred; (2) there was a significantly inverted U-shaped relationship between year-round VAQ and seasonal diversity. This is the first study to define seasonal diversity and its effect on VAQ.

Keywords:

• Seasonality
• landscape preference
• seasonal diversity
• urban green space

Acknowledgments

We want to thank the 56 college students who evaluated the landscape characteristics and the hundreds of anonymous participants in landscape preference evaluations in our trials. We also owe special thanks to the eight students who initiated the online surveys.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 32071830.

Notes on contributors

Wenyan Xu

Wenyan Xu is a PhD student in the Department of Architecture and a research assistant of Virtual Reality Lab of Urban Environments & Human Health at the University of Hong Kong. She is interested in the relationship between the environment and human health.

Bin Jiang

Bin Jiang is an associate professor in the Department of Architecture and the lab director of Virtual Reality Lab of Urban Environments & Human Health at the University of Hong Kong. He is a Co-Chair of Research and Methods Track in the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA). He holds a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U.S. His research work examines the impacts of the built environment on human health, environmental justice, environmental safety and criminology, and virtual reality technology.

Jingwei Zhao

Jingwei Zhao received his PhD in Ecology from East China Normal University and a Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture from Nanjing Forestry University, China. He is a professor at the School of Architecture and Design, China University of Mining and Technology. His research interests include landscape design, ornamental plants, landscape aesthetics and restorative environments.