Abstract
When we research a landscape or make a Landscape Impact Assessment, we use the image of a specific season like summer or fall. Since there are four distinct seasons, each with a different landscape, researchers need to understand viewers′visual preferences for individual seasonal landscapes. The purpose of this study is to investigate viewers′visual preferences according to seasonal change and the respondent′s age, gender and profession. In this research, the independent variable is season: suing, summer, fall, winter and snowy winter. Three landscape types used in the experiment: forest, street and agriculture. Each landscape type has two sites for reliability. The assessment media for this research are pictures featuring landscapes taken in each of the four seasons. The study used the "paired comparison" method for taking the score of visual preference. The results of this study are as follows: 1. The summer landscape has the highest visual preference score. However, spring and fall landscapes should also be considered for visual landscape evaluation. 2. The visual preference of winter landscape covered with snow is very high, but since snow is temporal and irregular, it is difficult to consider this factor for visual landscape evaluation. 3. The visual preference score of winter is the lowest of four seasons. The attractive factors of spring are flowers, summer is greenery and fall is autumnal tints. But these are not present in winter. 4. The result of visual preferences according to age groups, gender and profession have no serious differences. 5. Visual preference to scenery of 4 seasons by age group was not different from general preference and thus was concluded to have no connection with age. 6. As a result from the research of visual preference to scenery of 4 seasons by sex, women were shown to like snow-scene more than men. This study presents an indication of general preferences of seasonal landscapes. It is expected that more advanced study will proceed after this one.
