Description

Anthropological research has found that people typically prefer landscapes that visually afford greater amounts of spatial information; open vistas displaying features such as bodies of water, mountains, and vegetation, are found to be pleasing, while others like dense forests in which the distance is occluded by nearby trees are less so. Most studies of this sort have asked study participants to indicate their preferences across landscape photographs. This research will examine whether landscape preferences are affected by a different laboratory environment, virtual reality (VR), and measure whether landscape types correlate with certain patterns of gaze fixations.

Spherical, 360° 1-minute videos have been taken at a diversity of sites in eastern Tennessee that variously fit the descriptions in the anthropological literature of favourable and unfavourable sites. We will invite human participants to view a series of these spherical videos using a VR headset (an HTC Vive Pro Eye). Participants will be asked to give their ranked preferences of scenes. Additionally, the headset will record each participants' gaze through eye-tracking technology.

Thesis research will involve both running a series of human participant experiments in the laboratory as well as geometric, statistical, and thematic analysis of eye fixation patterns (e.g., identifying objects people focus on).

A student taking on this topic must have strong programming skills in order to automate the computer vision, geometric analysis, and statistical analysis involved.

Objectives and Methodology

To determine where people gaze when viewing natural landscapes and whether or not immersive video of landscapes affects people's landscape preferences.

Further reading

Raposo, P., & Brewer, C. A. (2014). Landscape Preference and Map Readability in Design Evaluation of Topographic Maps with an Orthoimage Background. The Cartographic Journal, 51(1), 25–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/1743277412Y.0000000027
Herzog, T. R., & Stark, J. L. (2004). Typicality and preference for positively and negatively valued environmental settings. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 24, 85–92.
Herzog, T. R., Herbert, E. J., Kaplan, R., & Crooks, C. L. (2000). Cultural and Developmental Comparisons of Landscape Perceptions and Preferences. Environment and Behavior, 32(3), 323–346.