title: Consensus in landscape preference judgments: the effects of landscape visual aesthetic quality and respondents' characteristics.
abstract: Landscape's visual aesthetic quality (VAQ) has been widely regarded as a valuable resource worthy of protection. Although great effort has been devoted to determining the factors driving aesthetic preferences, public consensus in judgments has been neglected in the vast majority of such studies. Therefore, the aim of our study was to analyze three main possible sources of judgment variance: landscape VAQ, landscape type, and variability among respondents. Based upon an extensive perception-based investigation including more than 400 hikers as respondents, we found that variance in respondents' judgments differed significantly among assessed landscape scenes. We discovered a significant difference in judgment variances within each investigated respondent characteristic (gender, age, education level, occupational classification, and respondent's type of residence). Judgment variance was at the same time affected by landscape VAQ itself - the higher the VAQ, the better the consensus. While differences caused by characteristics indicate subjectivity of aesthetic values, the knowledge that people better find consensus for positively perceived landscapes provides a cogent argument for legal protection of valuable landscape scenes.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamýcká 129, Prague CZ 16521, Czech Republic. Electronic address: kalivoda@fzp.czu.cz.
authors.forename: Ondřej
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Kalivoda
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamýcká 129, Prague CZ 16521, Czech Republic. Electronic address: vojar@fzp.czu.cz.
authors.forename: Jiří
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Vojar
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamýcká 129, Prague CZ 16521, Czech Republic. Electronic address: skrivanovaz@fzp.czu.cz.
authors.forename: Zuzana
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Skřivanová
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamýcká 129, Prague CZ 16521, Czech Republic. Electronic address: zahradnik@fld.czu.cz.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Zahradník
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D032921:Consensus; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D018153:Czech Republic; D004954:Esthetics; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010465:Perception; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Aesthetic preferences; Judgment consensus; Judgment variance; Landscape perception; Landscape scenery protection; Visual aesthetic assessment