Correlations between aesthetic preferences of river and landscape characters

Abstract

Some landscape characters put great influences on the aesthetic preferences of a river. Finding out these characters will provide for river landscape design and management with explicit keystones. In this paper, 23 sample areas of rivers were selected in Xuzhou, China, and 15 landscape characters of rivers were identified. The photos taken at the sample areas were as stimuli, and undergraduate students were respondents. The results demonstrate that the aesthetic preferences of photos judged one-by-one and judged together receive similar results; the preference scores of deflective views are significantly higher than the ones of opposite views; for urban rivers, "river accessibility" and "number of colours" are reliably positive predictors to aesthetic preferences, "wood diversity index" and "plants on water" are negative ones; for rural rivers, "coverage of riparian vegetation", "perspective" and "wood diversity index" are reliably positive predictors to aesthetic preferences.

Classification Model of Urban Riverside Landscape Using the Oder River as an Example

“…Zhao at al. [5] obtained other results where species, variety of trees and the presence of water plants constituted negative predictive factors for aesthetic preferences for urban rivers.…”

“…Similarly, the MULBO model [3], which is based on abiotic, biotic and socio-economic factors, omits the aesthetic landscape function. Zhao and co-workers [5] Fig.1. The research area (author study).…”

“…The junction of the city areas and the natural habitat represented by a river and the different types of landscapes alongside the open space of a river all contribute to the fact that these landscapes are extremely valuable and sensitive to the introduced changes. Daniel and Meitner [1], Filova et al [2], Meyer and Grabaum [3], Ruelle et al [4], Zhao et al [5] and Zhu et al [6] indicate that landscape quality assessment is an important component of environmental planning and management. Therefore, in order to conduct a thorough analysis of a present state, preceding the indication of the directions of city riverside landscape management, it is necessary to include (apart from generally known measurements and indicators used in spatial planning) landscape values as well.…”

“…These publications, mainly from the onset of research development concerning landscape assessment, have laid the ground for further academic studies that are dominated by mainstream research on open, natural and extra-urban landscapes [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Unfortunately, there is comparatively little research on urban landscape management [5,16].…”

Determination of the Visual Preferences of Different Habitat Types

“…Researchers ask participants to select or score their favorite photographs to determine the variety of landscape preferences (Bulut and Yilmaz, 2008;Canas et al, 2009;Tveit, 2009;Sevenant and Antrop, 2010;Kurdoglu and Kurdoglu, 2010;Howley, 2011;Ozkan, 2014). There are many visual quality evaluation studies on various habitat types, including those on rural landscapes (Arriaza et al, 2004;Rogge et al, 2007), wetlands, rivers, lake-wetlands (Meitner, 2004;Bulut and Yılmaz, 2009;Zhao et al, 2013), forests (Eroğlu and Acar, 2011), agricultural landscapes (Matthies et al, 2010, Acar andEroğlu, 2010 ), roadside and road corridors (Akbar et al, 2003;Clay and Smidt, 2004;Eroğlu at al., 2016), rocky habitats (Acar et al, 2013;Acar and Sakıcı, 2008), coastal landscape areas (Kalın, 2004;Ak, 2010), and mountainous areas (Eroğlu, 2012;Kalın et al, 2014). Most of these studies have attempted to assess the different settings found in a single habitat or to determine their seasonal changes.…”