How the amount of greenery in city parks impacts visitor preferences in the context of naturalness, legibility and perceived danger

Understanding how the physical characteristics of city parks impact the perceptions of visitors is a factor that designers may well find useful. Many studies have been made on the influence of the quantity of vegetation in parks, and how natural it looks, on visitor preferences, but the mechanisms underlying this impact are still insufficiently understood. We attempt to identify the nature of the relationship between naturalness, legibility, perceived safety and preference taking into account the complexity of these relationships in urban parks. We analysed the correlations between the variables and the mediating effects. We applied a within-subjects design whereby 127 participants evaluated a set of 120 eye-level photographs of park landscapes. We evaluated a number of mediation models while testing hypotheses regarding the mediating role of legibility in how the quantity of greenery and naturalness impacts perceived safety and preferences towards park landscapes. All the hypotheses presented, verified via analysis of indirect effects, were confirmed. Legibility mediates naturalness and safety – the naturalness of a park itself is not a source of fear as long as the park has a clear layout. Moreover, the influence of the amount of greenery on preferences is partly explained by naturalness and legibility: more greenery enhances a landscape’s natural feel, while a landscape that is extremely natural has lower legibility, which leads to lower preferences. Finally, perceived safety turned out to be a mediator between naturalness and preference – naturalness is not popular in a park because it lowers sense of safety. The research does not offer an indication as to whether visitors prefer parks with copious or sparse greenery, or wild-looking or sculpted vegetation. However, it has shown that parks with natural vegetation tend not to be popular when they are illegible and dangerous – nature and a large amount of greenery per se do not evoke negative feelings.