Search Results (1,219)

Urban parks have been widely recognized for their cooling potential; however, the regulatory effects of landscape element combinations on outdoor thermal comfort (OTC) in urban parks remain insufficiently quantified from a systematic, multi-dimensional perspective. Focusing on three representative urban parks in Zhengzhou, China, this study combines microclimate field measurements and questionnaire surveys conducted during the summer midday period to assess the regulatory effects of ten landscape element combinations on OTC across the physical, physiological, and psychological dimensions. Under summer midday conditions, OTC differences related to shading condition were generally more pronounced than those related to ground surface type or proximity to water bodies, with consistent trends across all three dimensions. Across comparable grass-covered and stone-paved combinations without adjacent water bodies, physiological equivalent temperature (PET) was 14.9–25.8 °C lower under dense tree shade and 11.9–23.9 °C lower under sparse tree shade than under unshaded conditions. This study further provides indicative estimates of summer midday thermal comfort reference thresholds for urban parks in Zhengzhou based on PET, including an extrapolated neutral PET reference value of 20.3 °C, a neutral PET range of 13.6–27.0 °C, and a thermal acceptability range of 15.4–36.2 °C. The multi-dimensional assessment advances understanding of the effects of different landscape element combinations on OTC and provides a transferable analytical approach for context-specific OTC research across different regions and urban park types. Full article

Urban heritage documentation has traditionally privileged visual and material attributes, while transient and sensory dimensions of everyday urban experience remain more difficult to record through conventional architectural methods. This study examines sensory cartography as an exploratory method for identifying and graphically representing perceptual dimensions of the urban cultural landscape. A six-week pedagogical experiment was conducted with thirty first-year architecture students in central Madrid. Organised into five groups, the students successively explored six perceptual registers—sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, and balance/orientation—across different urban areas. The variables represented in each exercise were generated by the students through field observation and subsequently translated into drawings and cartographic representations. The article analyses the complete six-week graphic corpus produced by one student group. The results show how sensory cartography can direct attention towards acoustic conditions, olfactory phenomena, haptic qualities, food-related activities, and spatial conditions associated with movement and orientation that conventional visual surveys may overlook. They also reveal methodological limitations: perceptual registers cannot be fully isolated from multisensory experience, non-visual phenomena are inevitably transformed when translated into graphic form, and the present design does not permit controlled cross-register comparison because perceptual register and study area varied simultaneously. The study therefore proposes sensory cartography not as a means of establishing intangible heritage values in itself, but as an exploratory form of architectural enquiry capable of identifying perceptual phenomena and everyday practices that may warrant further heritage investigation. Its pedagogical implications are considered exploratory, since learning outcomes were not formally assessed. Full article

The Biophilic Quality Matrix (BQM) evaluates natural-element criteria in relation to intervention scales. This study applied its published 10 × 10 structure to examine document-supported biophilic integration in three completed Singapore hospital environments. Twenty-five trained raters independently assessed case-specific public documentation, organized under a common template, for all 100 C × S cells. Median ratings yielded hospital-specific BQM profiles for the three cases, and cross-hospital screening identified 67 shared candidate cells. Rater-level bootstrap analysis retained 47 high-stability cells at an inclusion-frequency cutoff of 0.95, and the study-defined high-priority rule further retained 18 cells with a median of 4 in at least two hospitals. Exploratory semantic organization of the retained cells distinguished criterion-anchored groups centered on plants, ecological systems, sunlight, and earthly materials from scale-anchored groups centered on direct use and on sensory perception and variability. The retained relationships were then traced across the three hospitals to documented spatial configurations, including pond–courtyard–bridge systems, water-and-plant respite gardens, planted terraces and roof gardens, landscape-facing building interfaces, and landscaped routes across the hospital campus. These spatial comparisons support candidate design interpretations for precedent analysis. The findings describe what the reviewed records support and do not establish measured environmental performance, realized user experience, restorative effects, or clinical outcomes. Full article

Forest landscapes used for recreation also provide climate-regulating services that are often absent from spatial planning. We mapped aboveground biomass density (AGBD) and aboveground carbon storage in the Postavaru-Piatra Mare mountain landscape near Brașov, Romania, using a cross-platform remote-sensing workflow. MLS point clouds from 16 plots served as an independent plot-level reference, UAV LiDAR acquired at 70, 120, and 150 m provided airborne comparisons, and GEDI L4A samples, Sentinel-2 predictors, and terrain variables were modelled in Google Earth Engine using Random Forest (RF) and Gradient Boosted Trees (GBT). GBT achieved R² = 0.34 and RMSE = 106.42 Mg ha⁻¹, whereas RF achieved R² = 0.33 and RMSE = 107.45 Mg ha⁻¹. These values indicate limited explanatory power; accordingly, the resulting 25 m maps are interpreted as landscape-scale screening products rather than operational stand inventories. Against MLS, RF produced an RMSE of 79.05 Mg ha⁻¹ and GBT 82.58 Mg ha⁻¹, while UAV estimates were positively biased at all tested flight heights. Mean carbon density peaked at 1200–1400 m and was highest in coniferous forest, whereas broadleaved and tree-cover classes contributed the largest total stock because of their larger area. The RF and GBT estimates differed by 2.3% in aggregated study-area carbon stock. Aboveground carbon storage was the only ecosystem service quantified. The resulting maps should be interpreted as landscape-scale screening layers and as ecological inputs for future studies integrating trail, visitor-use, participatory-mapping or perception data; they do not quantify cultural ecosystem services. Full article

Safety culture has become a central construct in occupational safety management due to its recognized influence on organizational performance and accident prevention. However, the absence of a universally applicable assessment methodology has contributed to substantial methodological fragmentation. Therefore, this scoping review aimed to identify, classify, and critically analyze methodological approaches for safety culture assessment. Following PRISMA-ScR guidelines, studies published between January 2016 and October 2025 were retrieved from Scopus, Web of Science, and Dimensions. Study selection and methodological quality appraisal were conducted using predefined eligibility criteria and the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT, version 2018). Through a descriptive synthesis, the 25 included studies revealed a heterogeneous landscape encompassing psychometric surveys, multi-criteria and maturity-based models, and triangulated approaches. The findings indicate that each methodological family captures different dimensions of safety culture. Psychometric approaches provide scalability and comparability but remain dependent on self-reported perceptions, whereas multi-criteria models support structured organizational diagnosis. Triangulated approaches integrate multiple sources of evidence and facilitate the examination of discrepancies between formal organizational arrangements and operational practices. Overall, the review highlights the diversity of available assessment approaches and suggests that the evaluation’s objectives, context, and scope should guide the selection of the methodology. Full article

In the contemporary AI-mediated digital landscape, digital literacy has emerged as a cornerstone competency for students and is closely associated with institutional perception. This study examines the relationship between students’ digital literacy—within the context of AI-integrated learning environments—on Higher Education Online Brand Equity (HEOBE), brand trust, brand affect, and electronic word of mouth (e-WOM). Utilizing a Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) framework, data were collected from university students in Taiwan (N = 645) between January and February 2024. Statistical validation and hypothesis testing were performed using SPSS and AMOS. The results demonstrate that digital literacy in the AI era exerts a significant positive association with HEOBE, indicating that technologically proficient students within AI-integrated educational environments perceive higher value in a university’s digital brand. Furthermore, the four dimensions of HEOBE—institutional reputation, brand identification, brand loyalty, and campus perception—were found to exhibit significant positive associations with both brand trust and brand affect. Intriguingly, the study uncovers a behavioral dichotomy in word-of-mouth intentions: while brand affect is positively associated with e-WOM, brand trust shows an unexpected negative structural association with e-WOM. This suggests that while emotional attachment spurs advocacy, high cognitive trust may lead to “passive loyalty” in AI-driven digital spaces. These findings provide critical theoretical insights and practical benchmarks for higher education institutions seeking to optimize AI-augmented brand management and student engagement strategies. Full article

Cities worldwide are converting decommissioned railway corridors into linear parks, yet designers lack guidance on which heritage elements to retain and how to combine them with new interventions. Using the tangible–intangible distinction from heritage discourse, this study classifies visible corridor elements as tangible objects, intangible scenario elements, and intangible environmental context. Six scenes along the Taichung Green Corridor 1908, a 1.6 km elevated linear park in central Taiwan, were rated by 267 prior visitors on seven perception factors and overall preference, which yielded 1602 observations. Because each element configuration is represented by a single scene, the six scenes, rather than the 267 participants, constitute the effective units of inference for element category; element-level results are therefore reported as associations observed within this corridor. Mixed-effects models indicated that the presence of scenario elements was associated with higher uniqueness (b = +0.37), complexity (b = +0.45), legibility (b = +0.34) and preference (b = +0.20), whereas tangible remnants showed no association with perceptual quality that survived the exclusion of a single scene. Perception accounted for 91% of the total association between scenario elements and preference, principally through uniqueness and comfort. Ratings did not differ by gender, age or professional training but were higher among participants with less formal education and the lowest among residents of other districts of the same city. In this corridor, interpretive design rather than material retention was associated with heritage becoming perceptually available, at a measurable cost to naturalness: the material substrate of a heritage greenway behaves as a stock that does not by itself generate a flow. Because the findings rest on six scenes within a single corridor, they are offered as exploratory evidence from the Taichung case rather than as general design principles. Full article

The integration of geo-spatial databases, advanced modeling, and artificial intelligence provides novel opportunities to investigate regional differentiation with direct implications for urban science and regional development. To avoid homogeneous competition and support regional tourism planning, it is important to examine how tourists perceive different tourism elements across large regional spaces. However, existing studies still lack a systematic workflow for extracting destination-specific perceptual characteristics and linking them to specific tourism locations. This study develops a UGC-based framework to identify tourism elements and perceptual characteristics, construct POI-level perceptual weights, and map the spatial patterns of tourism perception across Northeast China using 196,028 Ctrip reviews from 1491 POIs. The framework integrates jieba segmentation with BERT ranking for keyword extraction, ChatGPT-assisted filtering and manual review for keyword standardization, K-means clustering for perceptual dimension identification, and GIS-based kernel density analysis for spatial visualization. The main findings are as follows. First, tourism perception in Northeast China presented a diversified composite structure. Second, different perceptual dimensions and representative keywords showed differentiated spatial distributions. Third, the spatial structure of tourism perception in Northeast China was summarized as a composite spatial pattern centered on the Five-Dimensional Composite Perception Core Belt, supported by the Natural-Landscape Perception Belt and the Water Recreation Perception Area, and supplemented by multi-level urban nodes and inter-node perceptual linkages. This study provides methodological support and planning implications for understanding regional tourism differentiation and guiding evidence-based destination planning. The construction of geo-spatial databases plays a fundamental role in linking tourists’ perceptions to specific tourism elements and locations, enabling fine-grained and spatially explicit analysis that is difficult to achieve using conventional survey-based data. Full article

Urban greening studies have traditionally emphasized vegetation quantity, while the perceptual implications of horticultural composition and spatial configuration remain less clearly understood. This study investigated how horticultural configurations were associated with multidimensional landscape perception across 10 urban parks in Chengdu, China. A total of 500 standardized landscape images, comprising 50 images per park, were assessed by 150 participants across 17 perceptual dimensions. Vegetation composition, spatial configuration, and conventional greenness indicators were quantified from the images and park-level spatial data. Principal component analysis and PERMANOVA were used to characterize structural gradients among parks, while exploratory factor analysis was used to identify integrated perceptual domains. XGBoost models with five-fold cross-validation were subsequently developed to predict individual perceptual outcomes, and SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) were applied to interpret feature contributions and nonlinear response patterns. Multi-objective optimization was further used to explore hypothetical configuration scenarios involving trade-offs among perceptual objectives. The first two structural principal components explained 65.60% of the variation in horticultural composition and spatial organization, and park configurations differed significantly (PERMANOVA: F = 166.66, p = 0.001). Horticultural typologies differed across 15 of the 17 perceptual dimensions (all p < 0.001), with the largest differentiation observed for nature (ε² = 0.270), species richness (ε² = 0.259), openness (ε² = 0.251), being away (ε² = 0.245), serenity (ε² = 0.236), and enclosure (ε² = 0.234). The XGBoost models showed consistently strong predictive performance, with test-set R² values of 0.692–0.812 and cross-validated R² values of 0.756–0.796. SHAP analyses indicated differentiated and nonlinear associations: vegetation continuity and enclosure were primarily related to restorative immersion, open configurations to spatial accessibility, and ornamental and compositional complexity to affective richness. The optimization results further identified continuous trade-offs among restorative immersion, spatial openness, and affective richness, rather than a single universally optimal configuration. These findings show that landscape perception is associated with the spatial organization and composition of horticultural elements through multidimensional and nonlinear pathways. The study therefore extends vegetation-quantity assessments by providing a configuration-based analytical framework for exploring perceptually balanced urban horticultural environments. Full article

Aesthetic perception of rural streetscapes reflects individuals’ cognitive responses to their surroundings and is central to understanding how landscape preferences are formed. Existing studies using Scenic Beauty Estimation (SBE) are constrained by incomplete indicator systems and overreliance on linear approaches. This study proposes an interpretable machine learning framework that integrates multi-source data to examine the nonlinear influences of streetscape features on SBE. Using Sanguan Village, a water-networked settlement in Jiangsu, we developed a 24-indicator system spanning color, spatial, natural, artificial, and cultural dimensions. Based on 523 panoramic images and aesthetic ratings from 1175 respondents, we compared OLS, DT, MLP, SVR, RF, and XGBoost models. The best-performing XGBoost, combined with SHAP analysis, revealed threshold effects and interaction patterns among variables. Green visibility, architectural aesthetics, building visibility, sky visibility, environmental coordination, and water are the top six feature variables most strongly associated with rural streetscape aesthetic perception, and each exhibits threshold effects. The saturation threshold for green visibility is 0.153, and architectural aesthetics can only make a positive contribution when its score exceeds 3.815. The appropriate range for building visibility is below 0.452, while the optimal value for sky visibility is approximately 0.194. We also explored the context-dependence of these threshold effects across urban and rural settings. This study proposes streetscape optimization strategies focusing on screening key factors, controlling their thresholds, and coordinating the allocation of streetscape features. The interpretable analytical framework for rural scenic beauty established in this research can facilitate evidence-based landscape optimization and provide scientific support for sustainable rural development and tourism in this case. Full article

Historic university campuses increasingly face simultaneous demands for functional renewal and heritage conservation amid rapid urbanization. However, the relationship between campus landscape perceptions and students’ built heritage conservation intention, together with the psychological pathways underlying this relationship, remains insufficiently understood. This cross-sectional study examines the association between Campus Landscape and Built Heritage Conservation Intention, focusing on the mediating roles of Place Identity and Place Dependence. Using a multidimensional place-attachment framework, the proposed model was tested with structural equation modeling (SEM) based on 569 student questionnaires collected at the Jungong Road Campus of the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (formerly Hujiang University), which contains the Hujiang University modern architectural complex, designated as a major historical and cultural site protected at the national level in China. Campus Landscape was positively associated with Built Heritage Conservation Intention. Place Identity showed a significant positive indirect association, whereas the indirect association through Place Dependence was not statistically significant. In subgroup analyses, the estimated indirect association through Place Dependence was positive among undergraduates and negative among postgraduates, but it was not statistically significant in either subgroup and should therefore be interpreted as exploratory. These findings highlight the significant indirect association through Place Identity and offer illustrative implications for campus landscape planning that is attentive to place identity and for the conservation of historic campuses in active use. Full article

The pervasive rise in digital platforms has fundamentally recalibrated the relationship between urban communities and their cultural landscapes, reconfiguring not only the sensory experience of these environments but also their interpretive frames and the everyday contestations that surround them. Using coffee spaces in Beijing as an empirical lens, this study integrates 630 validated POI locations, 287,632 online reviews from Dianping, GIS spatial analysis, LDA topic modelling, semiotic coding, and a fine-tuned RoBERTa (Robustly Optimized BERT Pretraining Approach) text classifier to examine the convergence between platform-mediated public perceptions and urban spatial differentiation. Our spatial interrogation identifies a statistically significant centre–periphery divide within this platform-curated corpus—a pattern that describes the geography of platform-mediated visibility rather than the total physical distribution of coffee outlets in Beijing, characterised by pronounced high-density agglomerations nesting within historic urban cores, central business districts, nascent knowledge hubs, and gentrifying lifestyle enclaves. Three landscape prototypes are derived from the data—business corridors, cultural experimental fields, and social-media spectacles. Each type exhibits discernibly different patterns of spatial density, adjacent land-use configurations, perceived experiential qualities, and underlying symbolic discourses. While positive sentiments dominate platform discourse, localised anxieties emerge regarding visual homogenization, intense queuing, premium pricing, and loss of place authenticity. The 630 venues analysed here represent a platform-visibility stratum—establishments sufficiently reviewed to feature on digital intermediaries—and the spatial patterns we map describe the geography of this visibility rather than the total physical distribution of coffee outlets. Full article

Existing studies on cultural landscape genes in traditional villages have largely focused on the identification of objective elements, while paying insufficient attention to the associations between tourists’ subjective perceptions, Place identity, and Satisfaction. Taking the five nationally recognized traditional villages in Wuxi, China, as case studies, this study constructs an association model linking cultural landscape gene perception, Place identity, and Satisfaction. The model was tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling based on 392 tourist questionnaires. The results indicate that Perceived Environmental Character, Perceived Settlement Morphology, Perceived Architectural Characteristics, and Perceived Cultural Attributes are all significantly and positively associated with both Place identity and Satisfaction. Place identity is also significantly and positively associated with Satisfaction. In terms of the standardized path coefficients, Perceived Settlement Morphology shows a relatively strong association with Place identity (β = 0.285), while Perceived Architectural Characteristics shows a relatively strong association with Satisfaction (β = 0.257). The model explains 41.2% of the variance in Place identity and 54.1% of the variance in Satisfaction. Both the direct paths between the four dimensions of cultural landscape gene perception and Satisfaction and the indirect paths through Place identity are statistically significant, indicating that Place identity plays a partial mediating role. This study extends Cultural Landscape Gene Theory from the identification of objective landscape elements to the levels of tourist perception and tourism evaluation, and reveals that Place identity may constitute a psychological pathway linking cultural landscape perception with Satisfaction. In practice, the perceptibility of village spatial patterns, architectural appearance, environmental characteristics, and cultural content should be comprehensively maintained to enhance tourists’ Place identity and overall experience evaluations. Full article

Traditional rural landscape evaluations have generally relied on ground-level photographs or videos. However, these approaches have limitations in spatial continuity, depth cues, and interactivity. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) photogrammetry and immersive virtual reality (VR) were integrated into a comparative rural landscape evaluation framework to assess landscape aesthetic quality. UAV-derived 3D village models were generated and deployed on PICO 4 headsets through Unity 3D and the Cesium plugin, providing evaluators with spatially continuous and 6DoF-enabled immersive representations of village scenes. The evaluation included ten landscape feature factors, including color harmony, vegetation richness, building layout harmony, openness of view, and sense of spatial depth. Ratings were collected from 75 valid participants across 17 villages, with village-level mean scores serving as the primary unit of inference. Paired-samples t-tests, subgroup sensitivity analysis, expert-only presentation-order sensitivity analysis, Pearson correlations, Steiger tests for dependent correlations, stepwise multiple linear regression, nested leave-one-village-out cross-validation (LOOCV), and bootstrap variable-selection stability analysis were conducted to examine differences between the 2D photo-based and VR-based conditions. The results showed that: (1) overall satisfaction was significantly higher in the VR-based condition than in the 2D photo-based condition (3.46 vs. 3.24); (2) the condition-specific regression models retained different landscape feature factors: sense of spatial depth and color harmony in the 2D photo-based model, and vegetation distribution pattern and environmental comfort in the VR-based model; and (3) the VR-based regression model had a higher condition-specific internal $R^2$ than the 2D photo-based model ($R^2=0.784$ vs. 0.569). Within the present dataset, the VR-based model also showed lower SD-normalized prediction error under nested LOOCV, while bootstrap resampling showed higher selection frequencies for the predictors retained in the VR-based model. Overall, the findings demonstrate the potential of UAV-derived immersive VR for rural landscape evaluation and provide new evidence on how presentation conditions influence landscape perception and evaluation. Full article

The rapid integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into digital commerce and social structures has created a complex perceptual landscape for consumers. While AI is often associated with efficiency and progress, it simultaneously triggers concerns regarding algorithmic opacity and loss of human control. This study investigates the dual role of digital literacy as a predictor of both perceived utility and consumer scepticism, as well as their subsequent impact on the overall perception of AI as an opportunity or a risk. Using secondary data from a nationally representative German survey on artificial intelligence (GESIS, Study No. ZA8719) and employing Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), the research tests a conceptual framework based on the “Privacy Paradox” and technology acceptance theories. The results reveal that digital literacy significantly enhances the perceived utility of AI while concurrently amplifying consumer scepticism. Furthermore, the study identifies a dominant effect of perceived utility on the overall evaluation of AI, whereas the impact of scepticism remains statistically non-significant. These findings suggest a compensatory mechanism where pragmatic benefits outweigh perceived risks in the consumer’s decision-making process. The paper concludes with strategic implications for digital marketing and e-commerce platforms, emphasizing that value creation is the primary driver for overcoming consumer resistance in the digital era. Full article