Adult Viewers' Preferences in Residential Scenes

A set of 18 adjective descriptors of visual attributes in the environment were given to design professionals to assess 60 residential scenes. In a factor analysis of these data, four factors Diversity, Nuisances, Enclosure and Clarity were obtained. The 60 scenes were divided into two sets of 30 scenes. Two groups of laypersons were asked to use four bipolar adjective scales to evaluate one or the other set of 30 scenes. The laypersons' composite preference scores were highly correlated with variables representative of each descriptive factor. Separate multiple regression equations for each set of 30 scenes and for the full set of 60 scenes were developed relating the visual attributes in scenes to composite preference scores. In both cases, the responses predicted bythe equation forone set of respondents and scenes correlated with obtained preference scores for the other respondents and scenes. People preferred residential scenes which were described as ornate, well kept, open and clear in use.