Seasonality and weather condition’s effect on human perception of the urban-rural transitional landscape

Abstract

Landscape perception research has been around for some time now; however, research into the impact of seasonally changing landscape characteristics with the simultaneous influence of the weather on such perception are rather rare. In an attempt to fill such a lacuna, basic eye-tracking metrics were calculated according to fixation and saccades for the whole tested landscape, while its areas of interest (AOIs) were established based on clustering methods. Moreover, the gaze pattern was analysed using the Voronoi cells method. To identify significant differences in landscape perception according to various weather and seasonal conditions, nonparametric tests were applied. The significant influence of both weather and seasonality is noticed, as well as their synergistic influence on the suburban landscape visual perception. Moreover, the results indicate a rather complex influence of the analysed types of weather in warmer and cooler seasons. Regardless of the weather type, seasonal changes cause greater visual span and shorter fixations in the warmer season. The fixations and saccades are shorter in the warmer season only in two AOI’s during positive weather, but are longer in negative weather during the colder season in most AOI’s. The main reasons for the influence of weather and seasonality on the visual perception include seasonal changes in the landscape, resulting in the appearance of the landscape from more urban to natural and vice versa (phenological changes) as well as lighting changes (due to seasonality and type of weather).