Exploring the interactive influence on landscape preference from multiple visual attributes: Openness, richness, order, and depth

•A single visual attribute is not stable in explaining landscape preference.•The interaction effects of visual attributes affect preference dynamically.•Manipulatable attributes should be used to explain landscape preference.•Applications in research and practice are proposed. Interactions among visual attributes shape people's landscape preferences. Insufficient understanding of the interactions often leads to inconsistent explanations of the main influencing factors of landscape preference. We analyzed 488 respondents' perceptions of four visual attributes and their preferences of a set of simulated landscape scenes simultaneously to explore the relationships between visual attributes and landscape preference. These scenes were generated by manipulating a real-world photo to create gradients in the openness of visual scale, the richness of composing elements, the orderliness of organization, and the depth of view while keeping other attributes constant. Our results provide direct evidence of the interactive influences of different visual attributes on landscape preference. Respondents preferred landscape scenes with high openness and high sense of order. The high richness of landscape elements could affect preference positively when the landscape kept a good sense of order. The depth of view only affected landscape preference significantly when the landscape had a moderate level of openness. Future studies on landscape preference should pay attention to the interactive nature of visual attributes and avoid making interpretations based on a single visual attribute.