Abstract
There is an assumption in current landscape preference theory of universal consensus in human preferences for moderate to high openness in a natural landscape. This premise is largely based on empirical studies of urban Western populations. Here we examine for the first time landscape preference across a number of geographically, ecologically and culturally diverse indigenous populations. Included in the study were two urban Western samples of university students (from southern Sweden) and five non-Western, indigenous and primarily rural communities: Jahai (Malay Peninsula), Lokono (Suriname), Makalero (Timor), Makasae (Timor), and Wayuu (Colombia). Preference judgements were obtained using pairwise forced choice assessments of digital visualizations of a natural landscape varied systematically on three different levels of topography and vegetation density. The results show differences between the Western and non-Western samples, with interaction effects between topography and vegetation being present for the two Swedish student samples but not for the other five samples. The theoretical claim of human preferences for half-open landscapes was only significantly confirmed for the student sample comprising landscape architects. The five non Western indigenous groups all preferred the highest level of vegetation density. Results show there are internal similarities between the two Western samples on the one hand, and between the five non-Western samples on the other. To some extent this supports the idea of consensus in preference, not universally but within those categories respectively.
Highlights
Understanding human preferences for landscape, and to what degree preferences differ between populations is of importance both from a basic research perspective and from a practical landscape and environmental management perspective
For the five non-Western groups — Jahai, Lokono, Makalero, Makasae and Wayuu — there were no significant interactions between topography and density of vegetation and it is sufficient to indicate the differences within the main effects of topography and density
The main objective of this study is to test to what degree preferences for natural landscapes differ across human populations, and if a manifestly cross-cultural sample reveals a universal preference for moderate to high openness predicted by theories in the field and previous empirical research
Summary
Understanding human preferences for landscape, and to what degree preferences differ between populations is of importance both from a basic research perspective and from a practical landscape and environmental management perspective. At the heart of these theories lies the idea that human adaptions during evolution have led to the development of innate preferences for particular environments; landscapes with physical characteristics that support psychological dimensions like understanding and exploring the environment, and feeling safe in it Many of these theories make a clear connection between preference and visibility, stating for example that high preference will occur for landscapes where you can see without being seen (Appleton, 1975), landscapes with open expanses with clusters of trees (Orians, 1980), or landscapes which are visually understandable and offer possibilities for exploration (Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989). These hypotheses are one reason why landscape preference research is dominated by work on the visual modality but this practice is further enforced by the convenience of testing with visual stimuli, as compared to the provision of multi-sensoric stimuli which demands a more complex experimental setup
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