Assessing landscape aesthetic values: Do clouds in photographs influence people's preferences?

Area of Science:

• Environmental psychology
• Landscape aesthetics
• Cultural ecosystem services

Background:

• Photo-based surveys are crucial for assessing landscape preferences and cultural ecosystem services.
• Weather and light conditions, particularly sunny versus inclement weather, significantly influence landscape perception.
• The impact of clouds within sunny landscapes on preferences remains under-explored, despite their potential to attract attention.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effect of clouds in landscape photographs on human preferences.
• To compare preferences between images with and without clouds.
• To identify factors influencing these preferences using eye-tracking, content analysis, and GIS data.

Main Methods:

• Comparative analysis of landscape photograph pairs (with and without clouds).
• Eye-tracking simulation to analyze visual attention patterns.
• Photo content analysis to quantify image features.
• Geographic Information System (GIS)-based analysis for spatial context.

Main Results:

• No significant preference difference was found between images with and without clouds at specific sky (22%) and cloud cover (39%) proportions.
• A higher proportion of sky in photographs positively correlated with increased landscape preferences.
• Increased cloud cover, especially with reduced sky proportion, negatively impacted landscape preferences.

Conclusions:

• Landscape preference studies must consider sky proportion and cloudiness for accurate, comparable results.
• Future research should explore diverse landscapes, socio-cultural respondent differences, and varying weather/seasonal conditions.
• Findings inform better methodologies for cultural ecosystem service valuation using visual stimuli.