Visual Features and Emotional Responses to Residential Neighborhoods (Environmental Aesthetics)

Kazunori Hanyu

Dissertation Abstract

The present research focuses on the relationship between visual aspects of residential areas and the ordinary person's responses to them. It determines the relative salience and connections of visual properties to affective appraisals during the day and after dark. Twenty sites were selected from residential areas in the University Area in Columbus, Ohio. Two wide angle color photographs, one in the day and one after dark, for each site were used as stimuli. Fifty-two students at the Ohio State University, Columbus Campus served as respondents. The participants were randomly divided into two groups; one worked on the day-time scenes and the other worked on the night-time scenes. The experiments for day and night scene included the same two tasks: sorting by similarity and rating on (twelve) perceptual/cognitive and (six) emotional affective scale tasks. Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) and cluster analysis were performed on similarity sorting data. Canonical correlation was performed on scale rating data. The results show that (1) type of housing units (single-family housing v. multiple-family housing units) is a salient factor in comprehending residential environments; (2) the relationships between the evaluative and the natural/open dimensions and between the arousal and disorder dimensions are dominant relationships in residential neighborhood experiences during the day and after dark; and (3) the well-lit/visibility dimension is important after dark, especially multiple-family residential areas. The results are consonant with some design guidelines developed by planners and architects from their experiences. The empirical findings in this study supported the validity of these experience based guidelines and may grant priority to other experience based guidelines.