Effects of Visual Attributes of Flower Borders in Urban Vegetation Landscapes on Aesthetic Preference and Emotional Perception.

Jingwei Zhuang,Yiping Xia,Yang Su,Lin Qiao,Xuan Zhang

doi:10.3390/ijerph18179318

Jingwei Zhuang, Yiping Xia + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18179318

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Abstract

The vegetation landscape in urban green space has been shown to provide great psychological benefits to people. Flower border is a well-designed small-scale vegetation landscape with the advantages of color and vegetation richness. This study focused on the effects of the visual attributes of flower borders on the aesthetic preference and emotional perception. The face recognition measurement method was used to obtain the emotional perception and the questionnaire survey method was used to measure the aesthetic preference. The results indicated the following: (1) regarding the ‘color features’ factor, high proportions of cool color and green vegetation significantly increased aesthetic preference and emotional valence, while the proportion of warm color had a negative effect on valence; (2) the ‘visual attractiveness’ (color brightness, and visual richness) and ‘color configuration’ (number of plant patches and number of color hues) factor was positively associated with aesthetic preference and emotional valence; (3) aesthetic preference was significantly related to emotional valence; (4) males expressed higher aesthetic preference and valence for flower border images than females. The results are expected to improve the aesthetic quality of flower borders and to promote public emotional health through the effective design of urban vegetation landscapes.

Highlights

Urban green space plays an increasingly important role in promoting human wellbeing [1,2,3,4,5,6] and relieving stress and mental fatigue [7,8]
This study focuses on investigating the relationship between visual attributes and people’s aesthetic preference or emotional perception for flower borders
Due to the mental benefits of vegetation landscapes in urban green space to public health, this study focused on small-scale vegetation landscapes that have not been thoroughly studied

Summary

Introduction

Urban green space plays an increasingly important role in promoting human wellbeing [1,2,3,4,5,6] and relieving stress and mental fatigue [7,8]. Well-designed urban greening environment improves urban aesthetic quality [9] and promotes the physical and mental health of urban residents [10]. Plants are the key environmental variable that form a major part of the urban green space [11]. Flower borders, a type of small-scale vegetation landscape, have been increasingly used in urban green space in China. Flower border is one of the application forms of flowers that combines flowers, herbaceous plants, shrubs and small trees [18]. It is a natural ribbon flower arrangement with trees, hedges, low walls or architectures as the background.

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