The relationship between humans and the quality of the environment have been examined primarily through two conceptual constructs: landscape aesthetics and place attachment or emotional place bonding. The former focuses on the physical environment and the latter focuses on the emotional or symbolic environment. This study focused on understanding the relationship between the two constructs, and provided a framework to integrate them toward a more comprehensive visual preference for landscapes. Nasar’s (1989) symbolic model was used as a guiding concept in the study. A web-based survey was used to collect people’s responses to landscapes portrayed in photographs. Four primary measures were used in the survey: landscape aesthetic, typicality (to a national park), emotional place bonding, and landscape visual preference. To further examine the effect of place meaning on responses to landscapes, respondents were told during the survey that landscape pictures were taken from different places, which were assigned randomly as place labels (national park, commercial recreation area, local park, and scenic area). Results indicated that emotional place bonding was significantly and positively influenced by perceived landscape aesthetics through four components: complexity, mystery, coherence, and legibility. Complexity and mystery had more influence on emotional place bonding than the other two components. Results also provided empirical support for Nasar’s (1989) symbolic model. The effect of landscape aesthetics on landscape visual preference was partially mediated by typicality and emotional place bonding. The typicality of a scene to a national park was found to positively influence people’s emotional bonding to the place. The four randomly assigned place labels did not elicit significantly different preferences or emotional responses to the places. This study documented how landscape aesthetics and emotional bonding can be integrated into visual preferences for landscapes. Results also provided evidence for the potential to use emotional bonding information to manage physical landscapes. The study contributes to our understanding and can assist with environment planning and management. Both physical appearance and symbolic/emotional meaning are very important to human perceptions of landscapes, and other attempts should be made to understand how the two constructs contribute to visual preference in future research.

As urbanization grows wildlife habitat is displaced and fragmented. Vegetative roofs offer an innovative alternative to provide animal food and habitat in urban environments. This research study investigates how wildlife needs in a green roof ecosystem are interpreted through children’s visual perception. A visual preference survey was administered to fourth-grade students in Starkville, Mississippi which offered paired photographs displaying basic vertebrate and invertebrate needs. The responses from 85 students (n=85) were compared to identify preferences for legible habitat components. The results of this survey showed that fourth-grade students could readily identify the basic habitat needs for birds but were less able to with insects. Students were intrigued with utilizing a green roof for learning and play. Green roofs have potential to be designed as innovative teaching tools to enhance science education in K-12 schools.

Poor sanitation and open defecation is a major concern in many parts of the world. Ecological sanitation is a possible alternative to the global issue by using dry toilet systems that allow for recycling the waste for other uses. The purpose of this thesis is to determine the cultural perception and design implications toward ecological sanitation in developing countries. By surveying the local population in the proposed environments and implementing a corresponding system, the sanitation system has a much higher chance of sustainability and success. In Northern Uganda, the population was surveyed through a questionnaire and a Visual Preference Survey to determine current conditions, immediate needs, cultural preferences, and attitudes toward the design of sanitation types with the main focus on privacy, placement, type and gender-specific facilities. Results demonstrated that the majority of the population was interested in learning more to improve sanitation and reuse waste for agricultural productivity.

Landscape visual preference research has indicated many potential indicators of preference; however a comprehensive framework concerning the relationship between visual preference and perception has not been solidified. Gestalt psychology, the predecessor to visual perception, proposes certain visual grouping tendencies to explain how humans perceive the world. This study examines if Gestalt grouping principles are reliable indicators of preference, and if they may be used to develop a broad context for visual assessment. Visual preference for 36 landscape scenes testing the proximity and similarity of landscape elements were ranked one through five by 1,749 Mississippi State University undergraduate, graduate, and faculty members in a web-based preference survey. Using a two-way between groups analysis of variance (ANOVA) to analyze responses, the results indicate that the proximal and similar configuration of landscape elements within a scene does significantly affect visual preference.

No description available.

No description available.

The 42-kilometer beach in Harrison County, Mississippi necessitates continual re-nourishment projects to ensure its survival due to constant erosion events. The stability that the root structures of vegetated beaches provide have been shown to be a countermeasure to these erosion events. It has also been shown that the public will utilize landscapes that they find to be attractive. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to ascertain whether beach users find vegetated beaches more attractive than un-vegetated beaches. In several Harrison County communities, beach users were surveyed through the use of a Visual Preference Survey and an accompanying questionnaire to determine their opinions on the design of the beach, its design elements, and the purpose of those elements. Results were mixed, however it was determined that beach users found beaches vegetated with multiple types of florae to be more attractive than non-vegetated beaches.

Insufficient knowledge of residential preferences represents a major obstacle to achieving residential satisfaction and quality of life. This obstacle is even greater in the case of transit-oriented developments (TODs), as their success depends, in part, on the degree to which people's preferences are consistent with their residential environments. This study employed a visual choice experiment, which combines the benefits of visual preference surveys and discrete choice experiments, to elicit residential preference for TODs in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, before the opening of its citywide public transportation system. Using a seemingly homogeneous sample of participants, the analysis incorporated three analytical methods to elicit residential preference: a multinomial logit model, a mixed logit model, and a latent class model. The results indicated the presence of preference heterogeneity and the emergence of four lifestyle classes that could explain and predict residential preference patterns. People with similar sociodemographic characteristics may have different lifestyles based on their choice behavior, marital status, and public transit attitudes. Additionally, the results showed a strong preference for low-density housing, even among those who favor living in a TOD; however, increasing density could be mitigated through the presence of other TOD attributes. The findings of this research point to the diversity of residential preferences and suggest that providing a variety of residential environments increases the likelihood that people will find their preferred environment. Additionally, planning efforts to convert all developments near transit, particularly in suburban locations, to TODs might be unsuitable in cities where public transportation has been introduced only recently. Instead, deferring TOD conversion efforts until public transportation and its use are mature may attract people to live near transit and encourage the gradual development of transit affinity in residents who may otherwise reject TOD living completely. Lastly, the successful application of a visual choice experiment in this research opens up a variety of potential analytical methods that are used commonly in other fields and have the potential to move visual preference research into the realm of robust empirical investigation. / Ph. D. / The work of urban planners, urban designers, architects, and policy makers centers on improving the built environment and increasing the quality of people’s lives. However, their work entails making decisions that are not always in tandem with people’s preferences (e.g., increasing housing density, proposing a mix of land uses in residential neighborhoods, introducing public transportation close to where people live and work, to name a few). Due to the uncertainty surrounding people’s acceptance of modifications of the built environment, especially when it entails introducing residential attributes for the first time, this dissertation focused on 1) assessing residential preference near public transportation nodes in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia before operation of the public transportation system, and 2) assessing the extent to which advanced analytical methods are capable of providing a better understanding of residential preference differences among a seemingly homogenous sample of participants. The work in this dissertation was motivated by the increasing use of manipulated images in choice tasks, where participants are presented with multiple images, each depicting a residential scenario, as bundles to choose from, and their choice patterns then recorded and analyzed. The results showed that among the relatively homogenous sample of participants that was recruited, four significant residential preference patterns have emerged, which could be used to describe and predict residential preference and choice with great accuracy. This dissertation laid out several policy implications that could be useful in providing a built environment that matches with what people want. It also provided research implications and suggestions on the use of visual choice experiments for urban planners and designers that are well-developed in other fields of inquiry.

The aim of this study is to examine the public preferences for urban riparian corridors in arid ‎regions, by testing to what extent people are willing to trade-off unmaintained ecological ‎landscape for aesthetics offered by specific micro and ‎macro environmental factors. Landscape ‎design reflects ecological and aesthetic values, and trade-offs are often made ‎between the two in ‎‎practice. In arid regions, water scarcity means riparian corridors are the ‎richest landscape ‎typology and the only ‎blue-green links for hundreds of miles. Pressure from ‎urbanization and ‎lack of eco-literacy contribute to negative ‎feedback loops which present dire ‎challenges for ‎migrating avifauna and regional wildlife. Regarding natural ‎resources and ‎biodiversity, where ‎multiple deliverable ‎ecosystem services rely on the quality and health of that ‎‎ecosystem, riparian ‎systems with high biomass are more desirable. Although this can be ‎achieved with low or no ‎‎maintenance riparian buffers, these unmaintained ecological landscapes ‎play an intrinsic role in ‎sustaining the ‎global ecosystem services and are important for the survival of the inhabitants ‎‎(avifauna). Ecological ‎landscapes are often subjected to trade-offs with aesthetic ‎landscapes that ‎include micro and ‎macro environmental factors such as manicured landscapes. It is accepted that ‎‎there is a ‎preference for aesthetics in landscape design; however, it is unclear how laypeople ‎prioritize ‎aesthetics ‎over different ecological factors in landscape scenes. This study uses a ‎Discrete Choice ‎Experiment (DCE) to elicit the ‎preferences of current or pretendant residents of ‎Jeddah City, Saudi Arabia for multiple landscape scenes. The method ‎combines ecological ‎landscape characteristics adopted from ‎the QBR index that are found in the study area in Jeddah ‎and aesthetic ‎characteristics, such as micro and macro environmental factors that are commonly ‎suggested in landscape design projects adapted from relevant visual preference studies (Alsaiari, ‎‎2018; Kenwick et al., 2009; Kuper‎ ‎,‎2017; Zhao et al., 2017). ‎DCE is a widely used method to ‎reveal preferences by analyzing the trade-offs people make ‎between ‎alternatives. Participants in ‎this study were exposed to a set of designs, which included ‎various configurations of ‎aesthetic ‎and ecological elements. Participants' choices revealed the influence of their ecological and ‎‎aesthetic values. Results show that minimal design interventions would prevent trading off the ‎ecological unmaintained landscape and that there are four subgroups with distinct homogeneous ‎preferences for the attributes affecting the appeal for the urban riparian corridor in Jeddah City. ‎Finally, results show that even though there are significant differences between subgroups based ‎on preferences, the demographic information is proportionally distributed in a way the means ‎differences diminish between the subgroups. ‎Findings in this study will equip ‎decision-makers ‎with operational definitions relating to riparian ‎landscape design and a method ‎that they can use ‎to minimize losses in ecological value over aesthetic value. This study will help‎ ‎researchers and ‎landscape architects advance visual preference research further into the domain ‎of empirical ‎‎studies.‎ ‎ / Doctor of Philosophy / Landscape architecture is a profession that entails planning and design outdoor spaces, ‎‎landmarks, and ‎structures to improve the built environment and increasing the quality of ‎‎people's lives by achieving ‎environmental, social, economic, and aesthetic outcomes‎. The ‎profession often reflects ecological and ‎aesthetic values, and trade-offs are often made ‎between ‎the two in ‎practice. These ecological values ‎represent environmental characteristics that are ‎important for the survival of wildlife (protected path ‎and safe habitat) and the overall ecosystem ‎‎(every being has a role that sustain the health of the ‎environment). Culturally, human is ‎accustomed to a slick-and-clean (tamped) looking plant within urban ‎developments (i.e., ‎neighborhoods). An example of the trade-off that often happen in practice between ‎the ‎ecological and aesthetic values is replacing an ecologically unmaintained plants that play ‎important ‎ecological role (i.e., wildlife habitat) with clean tamped plants to increase the value of ‎a real estate. Due ‎to the uncertainty surrounding people's acceptance of the features of these ‎ecological unmaintained ‎plants, especially when it entails introducing ecological riparian ‎landscape attributes within ‎neighborhoods for the first time, this dissertation focuses on both ‎assessing ecological elements ‎preferences within an urban arid region in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia ‎and assessing the extent to which ‎advanced analytical methods are capable of providing a better ‎understanding of ecological riparian ‎landscape attributes preference differences among a ‎seemingly homogenous sample of participants. ‎The increasing usage of manipulated images in ‎choice tasks inspired this dissertation. The results of the ‎study demonstrate that among the ‎relatively homogenous sample of participants that was recruited, ‎four significant preference ‎patterns have emerged, which could be used to describe and predict ‎preference for ecological ‎riparian landscape attributes and choice with great accuracy. The dissertation ‎also investigates ‎policy implications that might be beneficial in creating a ‎physical environment that ‎match public ‎preferences. ‎It also offers research implications and recommendations for landscape ‎architects ‎and urban designers on how to employ visual choice experiments, which have been well-‎‎developed in other research field