The Impact of Character Differences of Highway Landscape on Aesthetic Perception

This paper assesses the impact of elements and attributes of highway landscape on aesthetic perception for highway user. The case study area is a scenic expressway near Dali city, Yunnan Province. Based on methodology of photographic surrogate and questionnaire, four groups (Beijing residents, landscape architecture students, common students, highway landscape architects)were invited to score 20 colorful photographs representing five highway landscape categories (atmosphere phenomena, water, vegetation, farmland and artificial building). Results indicate that the average score of natural landscape aesthetic quality is higher than artificial landscape; while some artificial landscape gets high aesthetic scores, such as farmland and some artificial buildings. Wide viewshed is preferred by highway user rather than narrow viewshed. Highway landscape composing of vivid elements such as colorful flowers gets higher aesthetics scores and landscape of continuity character gets higher aesthetic scores as well.