Usefulness of Saliency Map in Estimating Food Appearance Favorability

Abstract

Saliency maps are widely known as a model for simulating visual attention and are also used in industry. They basically indicate whether target images have features that perceived, which predicts the region on which people's eyes focus. However, the saliency may also be related to the favorability perceived by observers [1]. Our goal examined if the saliency of the food product estimates the favorability. Specifically, we manipulated the saliency of hot snacks through the display case design and examined how the evaluation of favorability (the degree of tasty looking) changed. We expected that if we could estimate the favorability of the target product by only using the saliency map, which is an image to show locations with high saliency in images, it would be very useful to estimate the variables, which correlate with the favorability of the appearance of the hot snacks in a short time. Hence, in this study, the favorability of hot snack appearances was evaluated by participants, and the correlation between the favorability score and a saliency value that we defined was analyzed. The tendency of favorability against saliency was compared with that to color conditions of lighting or background of target objects. As a result, it has been indicated that there was the correlation between favorability of food appearance and saliency. Therefore, the possibility that the saliency map can be used as a tool to estimate favorability has been supported.