Effects of Design Proportion and Distribution of Color in Urban and Suburban Green Space Planning to Visual Aesthetics Quality
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The work presents an interesting and important issue of aesthetic quality of landscape along roads in urban areas. It focuses on the influence of the quantity and distribution of colour on people's perception, on their perception of the beauty of the landscape.
There are a number of doubts that need to be addressed in more detail to ensure that the work is fairly described. There are some references to them in the subsection "Limitation", but it would be worthwhile to describe them in more detail:
isn't the sequence shown in the picture too short? wouldn't it be too monotonous and tedious if it were to be stretched over e.g. 1 km? partly the opinion from the discussion is a confirmation for this doubt: „The contrast of landscape color of a large area and its effect was often stronger than the psychological effect on people in a small area” (L407-409) on the other hand, will such a colorful, attractive street edge not distract drivers, leading to more accidents? maybe the "monotonous" green landscapes (L74-75) are safer, however? partly the opinion from the discussion is a confirmation for this doubt: „excessively gathered color patches may negatively affect emotional state of people” (L376-377) is the considered colour, its attractiveness, not somehow connected with native flora and culture? Therefore, can general (international) conclusions be drawn that red plants should be added in roadside trees? a number of doubts related to the respondents and the questionnaire itself were highlighted in the following specific issues (part Materials and methods)
Introduction
L65 – „Li and others”
L86 – Do you need a question mark here?
Materials and methods
L105 – ‘Iris tectorum’ should be written in italic
L111 – not a “foreground shrub layer”, but a “foreground shrub and herb layer”
Figures 1, 2 and 3 – couldn't these pictures be enlarged? this would improve their readability
Table 1 – seems unnecessary, the description in the text, Figure 1 and the signature of Figure 1 explain the landscape variants used well enough
Figure 3 – picture "d" is wrong - it is the same as "c", and should be similar to "b", with the green and red inverted sequence in the midground
L152 – it is worth adding in the first sentence that the study was conducted in China
L153 – apostrophe in the wrong place
L156-159 – Were these questions open or closed (if so, what options were there to choose from)?
L159-162 – were the subsequent pictures being evaluated displayed individually on the screen, or did the respondent see them all at once on the screen and could he compare them with each other before the evaluation?
L162-163 – „The Questionnaire Star Company (Changsha, China) was used to publish the survey 163 on their website and participants were paid (8 yuan, ~ $1.15 USD) for completing the questionnaire.” Please describe how it works, how people could find out that there is a survey to be completed. If it is paid, is there a fear that people have entered anything to earn 8 yuan?
Table 3 – How did it happen that almost half of the people declared work with forests? Was the invitation to participate in this survey somehow targeted at such people? Does this indicator reflect the actual employment profile of Chinese residents? Another issue is the dominant share of respondents aged 18-30 - could this have affected the results? can you check how this group answered and how all the others did?
L179 – unclear: I think it should be „K represents the proportion of the color proportion and the spatial distribution…” albo “K represents the influence of the colour proportion and…. on aesthetics”??
L180-181 – “ηS represents the partial deviation of the landscape setting” – Does the term "landscape setting" refer to the background itself? This suggests an emphasis on this in the summary. How is the variability of vegetation in the foreground taken into account in this subsection? It was a parameter shown in "Landscape model simulations", so there should be some further references to it in the methodology
188-192 – please describe it in more detail, because a large part of the results is based on the Mvaq indicator
Results
Subsection 3.1 should be in subsection 2.2, additionally it duplicates the same information from Table 3, so only the first paragraph is needed.
It seems that this chapter could be a little more structured in the section "The effect of design color on VAQ". Three subchapters would suffice instead of the current five - one dedicated to "Color proportion" (including "Different background settings and color proportions", all relevant graphs and table sections), the second (with corresponding content) - dedicated to "Color spatial distribution", and as the third one - "Contribution of different types of color proportion and color spatial distribution to the quality of visual aesthetics".
L219 – no explanation for the abbreviation Mvaq
L219-221 – the sentence „The broadleaf landscape and narrowleaf coniferous landscape were similar and significantly higher than the mixed landscape” sounds not very good, it suggests that in the first two landscapes the trees were much higher than in the third one
L226 – „the a…”
Figure 4 – it would be better to move it to the current subsection 3.2.1
L232-233 – there shouldn't be such "suspended" texts, just a subsection right away. This text can be completely deleted, because this information is still in the following subsections
L235-236 – this sentence is imprecise: how „The landscape color proportions” can be higher than “the aesthetic quality”?
L241-243 – repetition of the information previously provided (L236-239)
L247 – were the Mvaqs counted for each C variant?
L252-253 – unsubstantiated conclusion: „But overall, increasing the red color can improve the aesthetic quality of the landscape.” After all, all combinations of color distribution were based on the same proportion of red (C50).
Table 4 – no explanation for the abbreviation Ago
L278-279 – imprecise wording („the other designs were significantly higher than the mixed landscape”)
L285 - Thus, an increase of the red proportion…
L292 – should be "the" and not "he"; it is not true that „the mixed landscape was rated the lowest” – on the Figure 7 for the LG_A, Narrowleaf landscape was underrated
L293 – “After introducing different colors of spatial distribution” – Is this "of" necessary? “an interaction between the two occurred” – between what and what?
L294-295 – imprecise statement: “The broadleaved forest was highest in the LG-U model”
L297-298 – “the background setting and visual quality differed with a group coniferous design rated higher than a grouped broad-leafed design” – according to Figure 7 this is only true for variant LR_A
Figures 6 and 7 – I guess the titles are swapped, because Figure 6 is about color proportion and not color distribution (and vice versa in case of Figure 7). I propose to add labels with values on the chart.
L319 – subsection numbering is repeated
Discussion
In the whole discussion, with statements like "The different foreground settings did not influence VAQ", it is worth adding that this applies to these studies, the region of China - in France or Australia it may be a little different!
L338 Müderrisoğlu and others
L355 – is the first "each" needed?
L357-359 – I think there's a problem with the sentence design
L363-365 – I propose to break this sentence into two, because the current statement of information in the sentence is not justified. In fact, it's best to give up this "suspended" text (L361-365), especially since it mostly repeats the information that is described later. Only move the first sentence to the next section
L372 – Is the word "red" necessary?
L372-373 – „When the (red??) patches in the middle layer are grouped and repeated, regardless of color being red or green the visual perception was relatively consistent” – on the Figure 7 data for LR_A and LG_A do not look consistent
L380 – which “two factors”?
L395-397 – “Changes in landscape attributes can cause differences in visual perception, and this process involves both physiological and psychological factors” – maybe it is worth mentioning these factors? can it be somehow related to the survey respondents?
L403-404 “The results of our study show that as the transformation of landscape quality changes through an increase of the area of color, VAQ increases” – this sentence repeats the messages in the previous sentence
Practical application - it is not concluded that modelling measures should focus primarily on midground and background plants
L436-441 – unclear. If we plant other trees of the same colour (but other shape), we can achieve the effect of a mixed landscape, and this one was the one that was the worst rated by the survey respondents. „From an aesthetic and economic perspective, in order to minimize negative effects and reduce the aesthetics of the landscape, the color proportion of the remodeled colorful tree species should not exceed 1/2 of the entire sight.” – there is no justification in the text for this sentence that coloured trees are more expensive, so why is the economic argument used?
L442-445 – “It is necessary to combine both a degree of color distribution and order of different color” – according to research, the order of colors is not important to the recipients, so why is it necessary in this application? The revised third application should be moved to the beginning as the most general
L446-447 – „In an existing landscape forests that has a mixed background layer, a change to a homogeneous planting reduces the visual complexity” – but according to research results it increases the aesthetic value for recipients!
L448 – “mixed landscapes should be added appropriately through repeated groups” – this does not result directly from your research
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
The problem raised in the paper presented for assessment should be considered as current and important for shaping forest landscapes along communication routes. The paper is valuable, it presents original research, it may interest international opinion. At the same time, there is a need to make several corrections and additions:
Title of the article should be completed: …Urban and Suburban Forest Landscape…
A well-written introduction testifies to a good understanding of the literature on the subject. However, in the case of visual assessment of the landscape, where we focus on trees - stand, at least in the introduction we should mention other characteristics than just color, affecting the perception of the forest landscape, such as: mosaic-like, age - size of trees, horizontal structure of the tree stands (see study: Dudek 2018, https://journals.vgtu.lt/index.php/JEELM/article/view/6268).
Line 82: In aim to the study, it should be specified which group of people the research concerns - young adults - read below.
The methodology is described in a comprehensive way. However, some ambiguities remain that require clarification.
Why only 60.7% of recruited participants completed surveys? What does repetitive fill mean? The methodology is not fully explained here. This should be improved.
The results are not very representative for a population> 50 years (only 2.8% of respondents), and 90% are young adults 18-40 years old. I understand that older people do not use the Internet so fluently but it was possible to obtain results in this group in a different way. It's necessary specified in the work that the research concerns young adults.
If the survey was open to everyone, it is a surprisingly large group of people working in forests - 46.2%. How does this relate to occupation?
In Table 3, not all categories add up to 100.0%, e.g. Occupation - 100.2%
The results are presented in understandable way. The results obtained are interesting and as well as the large practical dimension have also the scientific dimension.
Lines 458-460: The results are not representative of the entire population of the study area, but only for young adults 18-40 years old. This should be improved. Specify the purpose of the research, state that the research concerns young adults.
Line 463: …bark?
Author Response
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Reviewer 3 Report
The paper provided well-designed setting to show the impacts from landscape color on visual attractiveness. It compare different combinations of red proportions, spatial distributions and landscape textures. Through the comparison of the survey results, the paper brought up suggestions for the urban space planning. There are some questions related to the manuscript listed in the following part.
- Is there potential sample selection related to the survey? Could the authors compare the demographic information of the participants who agreed to participate the study with the participants who involved in the final analysis?
- Could different groups of participants have different preferences for the landscape color? The author could make comparison between different groups, such as male vs female, different education.
- Several sentences need editing. For example, line 153 “evaluate the respondents ’preferences”. Line 292, “finding, he mixed landscape”.
- The landscape color could be from different color of tree leaves, and it could also be from combination of flower and trees. Could the paper compare the results from this paper with the literature related to the color from flowers? What could be the differences? And what could be the
- The graphs simulated is in pictures. Could there be differences in the real world? For example, when people walk along the street, they would see continuous landscape rather than a static view. Could this impact the validity of the results in this paper?
Author Response
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Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments are in added file
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