The elderly’s preference for the outdoor environment in Fragrant Hills Nursing Home, Beijing: Interpreting the visual-behavioural relationship

Abstract

The outdoor environment in nursing homes provides various opportunities for elderly citizens’ daily activities, which is closely linked to their health and well-being. The elderly’s preference for the outdoor environment in health-care settings is a major issue but has not been adequately investigated. This study aimed to explore the elderly’s visual and behavioural preference and the relationship in between. We used the methods of Visitor-Employed Photography and Behaviour Mapping, and Pearson Correlation Coefficient was then used to explore the relationship between visual and behavioural preference. We categorized the visual preference into two domains – content-based attributes referring to landscape elements and subtle details, and spatial configurations which form a sense of spatiality. We found that the outdoor environment of content-based attributes and that of spatial configurations interacted with each other on shaping the elderly’s visual preference, in which plants also played a significant role. The behavioural preference for dynamic and static spaces (referring to spaces where elderly people walk through or stay for a while respectively) varied according to the content of their daily activities. The correlation between visual and behavioural preference highlighted the important implications of visual preference for outdoor environment of spatial configurations, especially with positive evaluations, on behavioural preference for both dynamic and static spaces. In the combination of interdisciplinary methods and techniques, this study contributes to evoking new comprehensive understanding on the visual-behavioural relationship for space annotation for both researchers and designers in the future.