Nature imagery in user interface design: the influence on user perceptions of trust and aesthetics

User interfaces often utilise imagery of pristine natural environments, even if the system's purpose and context are unrelated to nature. In this paper, we build on evolutionary psychology to develop a theoretical model for the influence of nature imagery on user perceptions of trust, visual aesthetics, and purchase intentions in a corporate sales setting. We evaluate our model by means of an online experiment (n = 408) using a website with different configurations of nature imagery. The results provide support for our theoretical model and hence confirm a positive influence of nature presence, that is, the extent to which the website allows a user to experience the natural environment as being present, on trust, visual aesthetics, and purchase intentions. Thereby, user perceptions of nature presence are specifically linked to nature imagery depicting water as well as vegetation. This study furthers our understanding of how the environmental context of on-site imagery can have subtle information processing benefits for users. For practitioners this study offers insight to the types of imagery that could be utilised more effectively in corporate interface designs.