Which ornamental features of bamboo plants will attract the people most?
Graphical abstract
Introduction
It is well known that the ideal green space could have beneficial physiological and psychological impacts on society (Rahnema et al., 2019). Visual landscapes and ecology can affect human health and help to relieve tension and improve body regeneration and rehabilitation (Özgüner, 2011). The arrangement of plants and their design has a tremendous effect on how people interpret them (Lindemann-Matthies and Bose, 2007). In certain circumstances, plants are the key aspect of the ecosystem that create an effect on the viewer's mind (Schoen et al., 2009). This concept has been characterized as an environmental preference and has often been regarded as a result of the relationship between the environment and the perceived potential for restoration (Wilkie and Clements, 2018; Smith and Moore, 2013). Several studies have evaluated environmental preferences to the aesthetic aspects of natural beauty through psychophysical approaches (Scott et al., 2020; Chang et al., 2008). Their results indicate that environmental preferences are strongly related to environmental features and visual stimuli (Al-Samarraie et al., 2018; Avolio et al., 2015; Hofmann et al., 2017). However, there is a need to explore the relationship between visual attentions determined by physiological measures and stated preference to stimuli as the physiological response indicating visual attention to specific features is unknown.
The use of eye-tracking technologies to analyze visual attention and behavior is meaningful (Dixson et al., 2011). Eye-tracking technology measures the visual intentions by monitoring the participant's gaze fixations and the length of the stimulus fixation (Behe et al., 2020). Eye-tracking also can be a complementary approach to subjective preference (Dudinskaya et al., 2020). Combined with subjective preference methods with eye-tracking technology are the potential methods to reveal visual attention to specific characteristics (Meyerding and Merz, 2018).
Eye-tracking may have the potential to explain the individual preference in eco-friendly plant characteristics (Khachatryan et al., 2017), choice of market productions (Behe et al., 2013), visual plant traits, colors, seasonal color change, and personality traits (Ho et al., 2015; Hofmann et al., 2017; Al-Samarraie et al., 2018; Paraskevopoulou et al., 2018). Many studies have combined self-reports with eye-tracking technologies to reveal preference and visual attention (Behe et al., 2015; Ho et al., 2015). People may be more appealing and fascinating as they provide visual attention to stimuli (Dixson et al., 2011; Maner et al., 2008). Visual manipulation could influence stated preference by increasing the attractiveness (van der Laan et al., 2015) and key features might cause a higher fixation count (Orquin and Mueller Loose, 2013). Besides, visual attention may highly correlate with fixation duration and fixation count (Behe et al., 2015, 2020).
Fixation count and dwell time on stimulus have been considered as a judgment of attractiveness (Behe et al., 2015, 2020). Looking longer at stimulus (referred to as ‘gaze bias’) is attributed to the down-stream effects of dwelling time and fixation count (van der Laan et al., 2015), which is probably caused by the process of top-down attention (Orquin and Mueller Loose, 2013). Saccade amplitude determines the fixation duration (Nattkemper and Prinz, 1987) and the shorter saccade suggests that the participants have reduced their attention (Russo and Rosen, 1975). People spend longer time and more fixation count on their preferred colors (Lee et al., 2005). A study on green space plants in the United States illustrates specific characteristics, such as tree shape and size, but neglected plant color, which is one of the main factors that determine the importance of green spaces (Gudin, 2017). Color is one of the most observable and prominent features of social life so that one can anticipate some of the traits of individuals and societies by observing colors in urban environments. In addition, gaze pattern reveals that people prefer an attractive stimulus with more fixation count and longer dwell time (Hall et al., 2011). Previous studies have suggested that attractiveness and preference tend to be relevant to pupil size (Hess and Polt, 1960). The relationship between stated preference and visual attention to bamboo plants is unknown. Therefore, in the present study, dwell time, fixation count, saccade amplitude, and pupil size were considered as the attractiveness of participants in measuring beauty or personality traits. However, neither survey employed eye-tracking to create user perceptions for ornamental attributes of bamboo plants.
There are over 1600 species of bamboo species worldwide (Vorontsova et al., 2016), and China is growing a significant number of bamboo species and cultivars with high aesthetic value and ornamental interest (Shi et al., 2014). Several bamboo plants have been introduced to landscape green spaces in the United States and Europe owing to their exceptional horticultural interests (Crompton, 2006). The ornamental features in bamboo species are expressed in stem color, leaf stripe, stem stripe, stem variant, etc. Compared to flowering plants, foliage plants are less attractive to humans (Rahnema et al., 2019). The relationship between stated preference and visual attention depends on their attributes (Krucien et al., 2017). For instance, a saliency-based method use for visual assessment and suggests that color and size of the landscape have been the influential factors causing the difference of scenarios (Dupont et al., 2017). Previous studies demonstrate that higher visual saliency would make the stimuli more likely to maintain visual attention (i.e. higher percent of the time spent) and hence increase the stated preference (Krajbich et al., 2010; van der Laan et al., 2015; Bialkova and van Trijp, 2011).
Bamboos are well known to have highly ornamental qualities, but there is no evidence on which characteristics of ornamental bamboo are more preferred by people. To the authors' understanding, this manuscript is the first to examine the connection between visual recognition and audience experience. In this study, we addressed the following questions: (1) which feature of ornamental bamboos would attract people most? (2) How about the measures of eye-tracking when people received the visual stimulation? (3) which measures of eye-tracking were highly related to the preference of ornamental features of bamboos? By addressing these questions, we conducted eye-tracking experiments and questionnaires to evaluate the visual preferences of people and the perceptual quality of different bamboo features.
Section snippets
Participants
Overall ninety students (20–35 years, average age 23.13 years ± 2.79 years), with 43.33 % and 56.67 % comprising males and females, respectively. Participants were recruited from the College of Forestry, College of Landscape and Architecture, and College of Horticulture, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University volunteered to participate in this experiment. They were selected as subjects with natural color vision, with a certain foundation in aesthetics, and a wide variety of aesthetic
Heat maps
Participants mainly focused their attention on SCII and SCIII, LSII, SSIII, SVTIII, and Tree (Fig. 1). The interesting area of heat maps varied from different features. Heat map results revealed that the greater concentration of attention was in the middle of the pictures. However, for growth habit, the participant's attention varied and exhibited different hotspots (Fig. 1 e).
The subjective ratings
The reliability test (Cronbach's α = 0.695), the validity test(KMO = 0.635), and the Bartlett test of sphericity (P =
Discussion
Revealing the perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes of people towards green space has recently become a subject matter of scientific consideration (Rahnema et al., 2019). To succeed in the design of the plantations, it is meaningful to consider people's opinions, expectations, and points of view. A successful site is a place that is more vibrant and involved and can maintain an atmosphere in which people's pleasure is valued (Montgomery, 2015). The heat map shows the fixated area and fixation
Conclusion
Integrated subjective ratings with objective eye-tracking measures would be well explained the preference of ornamental features. People prefer the ornamental features, green stem, green stem with irregular yellow stripes or yellow stem with narrow green stripes, leaves with less number of stripes, normal stems, and tree. This research has important consequences for landscape experts in the design and maintenance of ornamental bamboo plantations in China as well as in other parts of the world.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Junming Zheng: Writing - original draft, Conceptualization, Methodology. Muhammad Waqqas Khan Tarin: Validation, Writing - review & editing. Denghui Jiang: Data curation, Software. Min Li: Data curation, Visualization. Jing Ye: Software, Investigation. Lingyan Chen: Investigation. Tianyou He: Investigation. Yushan Zheng: Methodology, Supervision.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that there are no competing financial interests.
Acknowledgement
This project was jointly supported by Fujian Province Major Science and Technology Project (2011N5002).
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