title: Multi-sensory landscape assessment: the contribution of acoustic perception to landscape evaluation.
abstract: In this paper, the contribution of visual and acoustic preference to multi-sensory landscape evaluation was quantitatively compared. The real landscapes were treated as dual-sensory ambiance and separated into visual landscape and soundscape. Both were evaluated by 63 respondents in laboratory conditions. The analysis of the relationship between respondent's visual and acoustic preference as well as their respective contribution to landscape preference showed that (1) some common attributes are universally identified in assessing visual, aural and audio-visual preference, such as naturalness or degree of human disturbance; (2) with acoustic and visual preferences as variables, a multi-variate linear regression model can satisfactorily predict landscape preference (R(2 )= 0.740), while the coefficients of determination for a unitary linear regression model were 0.345 and 0.720 for visual and acoustic preference as predicting factors, respectively; (3) acoustic preference played a much more important role in landscape evaluation than visual preference in this study (the former is about 4.5 times of the latter), which strongly suggests a rethinking of the role of soundscape in environment perception research and landscape planning practice.
authors.affiliation: Key Lab of Urban Environment and Health, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 1799 Jimei Road, Xiamen 361021, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Yonghong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Gan
authors.affiliation: Key Lab of Urban Environment and Health, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 1799 Jimei Road, Xiamen 361021, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.affiliation: Department of Urban Planning and Design, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, No. 111 Ren'ai Road, Suzhou Dushu Lake Higher Education Town, Suzhou Industrial Park, Suzhou 215123, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Werner
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Breitung
authors.affiliation: School of Architecture, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TN, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kang
authors.affiliation: Key Lab of Urban Environment and Health, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 1799 Jimei Road, Xiamen 361021, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Tianhai
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D001307:Auditory Perception; D002681:China; D002755:Choice Behavior; D004779:Environment Design; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016014:Linear Models; D008297:Male; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D012931:Social Environment; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D014507:Urbanization; D014796:Visual Perception