INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY, 2005, 40 (1), 19–26

Aesthetic preferences and the attribution of meaning:

Environmental categorization processes in the
evaluation of urban scenes

Ma- Paz Galindo Ma- Carmen Hidalgo

Universidad de Sevilla, Spain Universidad de Málaga, Spain

I n the context of research into scenic quality, the purpose of the present paper is to establish categories of
urban landscapes on the basis of users’ aesthetic judgements. It also explores the role that the restorative
capacity of a place—in terms of the attentional restoration theory (ART)—together with a set of aesthetic
attributes, may play in more or less valued places in a city. A total of 132 residents from Málaga (Spain) were
chosen, with the city providing the physical framework for environmental reference. A questionnaire designed for
easy self-administration by subjects was used to collect information. Subjects were asked to identify three places
in Málaga that they considered to be most attractive and three that they considered least attractive. Participants
were asked to evaluate both the restorative properties—in terms of the ART—and the extent to which their first
choice displayed certain environmental characteristics. Participants expressed a clear aesthetic preference for
recreational sites for leisure/walking as well as those closely linked to the city’s historical-cultural identity. The
research also identified other categories of visual settings that could be used as a focal point around which to
centre future samples of scenes in a city context. Finally, the results obtained from the characterization of more
and less attractive places, from the variables used in this study, shed light on the dimensions of underlying
meaning that individuals use to categorize their environment and reinforce the idea that environmental aesthetics
seem to play an important role in individuals’ general well-being.

D ans le cadre de la recherche sur la qualité scénique, le but du présent article est d’établir des catégories de
paysages urbains sur la base des jugements esthétiques des utilisateurs. Il explore aussi le rôle joué
par la capacité de restauration d’un lieu—selon la Théorie de restauration attentionnelle (ART)—conjointement
à un ensemble d’attributs esthétiques, sur les endroits plus ou moins appréciés dans une ville. Au total, 132
résidents de Malaga (Espagne) furent sélectionnés, en considérant que cette ville offre un cadre physique
de référence environnemental. Un questionnaire auto-administré fut complété par les participants. Ces derniers
devaient identifier trois lieux à Malaga qu’ils considéraient comme plus attrayants et trois autres qu’ils trouvaient
moins attrayants. Ils devaient également évaluer les propriétés de restauration—selon l’ART—et l’ampleur avec
laquelle leur premier choix concordait avec certaines caractéristiques environnementales. Les participants ont
exprimé une préférence claire pour les aires récréatives de loisirs et de marche ainsi que pour les lieux associés à
l’identité historique et culturelle de la ville. La recherche a aussi permis d’identifier d’autres catégories d’aspects
visuels qui pourraient être utilisées comme éléments à partir desquels seront créées les scènes futures en contexte
urbain. Finalement, les résultats obtenus à partir de la catégorisation des endroits plus ou moins attrayants, à
partir des variables utilisées dans cette étude, nous éclairent sur les dimensions des significations sous-jacentes
utilisées par les individus pour catégoriser leur environnement. Ceci renforce l’idée que les aspects esthétiques
environnementaux joueraient un rôle important dans le bien-être général des individus.

E n el contexto de los estudios sobre calidad escénica, el presente trabajo se ha diseñado con el objetivo de
determinar categorı́as de paisajes urbanos a partir de los juicios estéticos de sus usuarios. Adicionalmente,
se ha explorado el papel que la capacidad restauradora de un lugar—en términos de la Teorı́a de la Restauración
Atencional—ası́ como un conjunto de atributos estéticos pueden desempeñar en los lugares más y menos
valorados de una ciudad. Para ello se seleccionó un total de 132 residentes en Málaga (España) ası́ como el
contexto fı́sico de dicha ciudad como marco de referencia ambiental del estudio. Como instrumento de recogida

Correspondence should be addressed to Ma- Paz Galindo, Departamento de Psicologı́a Experimental, Facultad de Psicologı́a,
Universidad de Sevilla, C/Camilo José Cela s/n, 41018, Sevilla, , Spain (E-mail: mpaz@us.es).).

# 2005 International Union of Psychological Science

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pp/00207594.html DOI: 10.1080/00207590444000104
20 GALINDO AND HIDALGO

de información se utilizó un cuestionario diseñado para ser autoadministrado fácilmente por los participantes. La
tarea que se les solicitó a éstos fue la de identificar los tres lugares de Málaga que les resultaran visualmente más
atractivos, ası́ como los tres que consideraran más feos. Asimismo se les pidió, en relación al lugar identificado en
la primera posición, que evaluaran tanto sus propiedades restauradoras—en términos de la ART—como el grado
en que exhibı́a determinadas caracterı́sticas ambientales. Los participantes expresaron una clara preferencia
estética por los lugares recreativos de ocio/paseo, ası́ como aquellos estrechamente vinculados con el desarrollo
histórico—cultural de la ciudad. Asimismo, se han identificado otras categorı́as de entornos visuales que pueden
servir como eje en torno al que articular futuros muestreos de escenas en el contexto de la ciudad. Finalmente, los
resultados obtenidos a partir de la caracterización de los lugares mas y menos atractivos—en las variables objeto
de este estudio—ofrecen luz sobre las dimensiones de significado subyacentes a través de la que los individuos
categorizan su ambiente y apoyan la consideración de la importante función que la estética ambiental parece
desempeñar en el bienestar general de los individuos.

In the field of research into environmental
aesthetics, preference studies have attempted to
understand the scenic quality of a certain place by
analysing the responses to it given by different
groups of ‘‘nonexpert’’ participants. These
responses have generally been used as a unit of
analysis for generating predictive models of visual
quality (psychophysical models) or frameworks for
explaining aesthetic experience (cognitive models).
In research into cognitive models, some studies
have used preference judgements as a unit of
judgement to delimit landscape categories that are
important for users. The results of such studies
show that one of the underlying dimensions of
perceptual differentiation is related to the ‘‘extent
of human intervention’’; in other words, the extent
to which the evaluated scene contains buildings
and what the perceived equilibrium is between
human and natural elements. On this point, for
example, a clear distinction in the aesthetic
judgements of several groups of subjects has been
established between natural and urban contexts,
especially when the latter lack natural elements
such as water and vegetation (Herzog, 1985;
Kaplan, 1987; Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989; Peron,
Purcell, Staats, Falchero, & Lamb, 1998; Purcell,
Lamb, Peron, & Falchero, 1994). Similarly, when
the study has included a large variety of scenes,
certain attributes of spatial configuration (such as
the extent of openness and spatial definition, the
normal function and/or use of the place, and the
age of the site and its upkeep) form additional
bases for the perceptive-evaluative categorization
made by nonexpert individuals (for a review of
these studies see Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989).
Most studies attempting to delimit landscape
categories have used photographs of natural
scenes that are unfamiliar to participants, having
been selected by researchers using different cri-
teria. This procedure of stimuli selection and
presentation requires the fragmentation of the
molar environment (as represented in subjects’
memory systems) and depends on the criteria of
individual experts. Furthermore, very little of the
research mentioned above evaluated urban stimuli,
or the role that familiarity or recognition of
visualized scenes may play in processes of aesthetic
evaluation. The development of evaluation proce-
dures aimed at identifying categories of known
and/or familiar places for participants, that meet
their own selection criteria, is an area that has
received little attention and could also provide
important information in terms of optimizing
processes of environmental sampling.
To overcome some of the above-mentioned
limitations, an evaluation procedure was designed
in a previous study to identify urban scene
categories that were known and/or familiar to
nonexpert participants, using selection criteria
established by the subjects themselves (Galindo,
1994). A random sample of residents from the city
of Seville was asked to identify three public
landscapes in the city that they found most
attractive in visual terms. The analysis of their
responses allowed us to establish four main
perceptive-evaluative categories for urban scenes
that were important for users: (1) historical-
cultural landscapes, (2) leisure areas, (3) recrea-
tional landscapes, and (4) housing areas. These
categories were configured, however, from the
analysis of a single range of aesthetic preferences
(‘‘attractive’’ places) and were not characterized
according to any other variable by the subjects
interviewed. Exploring the generality of such a
categorization in other geographical scenes, incor-
porating the analysis of places considered ‘‘unat-
tractive,’’ is one of the aims of the present study. It
is based on the assumption that identifying more
or less ‘‘attractive’’ landscapes of one specific
molar setting provides an opportunity not only for
registering its main scenic resources (descriptive
objective), but also for clarifying which implicit
criteria of visual quality are used by nonexpert
individuals (explanatory objective).

Regarding the (implicit) standards of scenic
beauty, Nasar proposed (1994, 1997) two types of
variable in the context of urban design: Attributes
of formal aesthetics and attributes of symbolic
aesthetics. Among the former, the authors highlight
‘‘openness’’ (and/or spaciousness), ‘‘mystery,’’
‘‘complexity’’ (both related to visual diversity),
and ‘‘order’’ (or congruence between the elements
that make up the scene). In relation to the symbolic
aesthetic attributes, Nasar mentions variables of
content such as ‘‘vegetation,’’ ‘‘upkeep,’’ ‘‘style,’’
and ‘‘perceived use.’’ Results from a substantial
number of empirical studies have demonstrated the
role that these characteristics play in aesthetic
evaluation responses. Some of the variables men-
tioned by Nasar have also been adopted in various
evolutionist theoretical proposals that have linked
aesthetic evaluation responses to certain scenes with
the important psychological benefits likely to arise
from contact with these scenes (Appleton, 1987;
Kaplan 1987; Ulrich, 1983). In this context, the
Attentional Restoration Theory (ART; Kaplan,
1995; Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989) was developed
around the idea that certain settings may reduce
tiredness caused by directed attention, thus
enabling the re-establishment of certain cognitive
abilities. Other research has focused on the
construction of an instrument to measure the
restorative capacity of a specific place—in terms
of the ART—(Hartig, Korpela, Evans, & Gärling,
1997) as well as analysing the role that this capacity
may play in the selection of ‘‘favourite’’ places
(Korpela & Hartig, 1996; Korpela, Hartig, Kaiser,
& Fuhrer, 2001) or in aesthetic judgements (Peron,
Berto, & Purcell, 2002; Purcell, Peron, & Berto,
2001). Although, in this context, the existence of
relationships between the restorative capacity of
natural surroundings and their aesthetic evaluation
has been documented in some studies, there is very
little actual evidence of the existence of this
association in urban settings.
Within this framework, the overview guiding
the design of this study is establishing categories of
urban places from the perspective of their daily
observers, as well as attempting to identify some of
the important dimensions of meaning that underlie
aesthetic preferences. Based on this overview, we
have drawn up the following specific objectives:
1. Establish categories of more and less valued
urban places and analyse any similarities/differ-
ences existing on the aesthetic value assigned (as
well as their frequency of use).
2. Determine the role that the restorative capacity
of a place (in terms of the ART) may exercise in its
aesthetic evaluation.
AESTHETIC JUDGEMENT OF URBAN SCENES 21
3. Characterize the more and less valued places
within the set of aesthetic attributes (sensorial and
semiotic) delimited in Nasar’s proposal.
4. Explore the relationships between the restora-
tive capacity of a place and the aesthetic attributes
selected in this study.
METHOD
Participants
The sample consisted of 132 university students
(72 women and 59 men, average age 26 years), all
residents of Málaga city. They were selected from
a larger sample of 202 subjects. All participants
complied with the following criteria: (1) they had
been born in Málaga or had been living there for a
minimum of 9 years; (2) they expressed a strong
sense of belonging to the city. This information
was collected from two questions in the ques-
tionnaire described in the following section.
Procedure
A questionnaire was designed to be easily self-
administered by the participants themselves. They
were asked to do the following. First: ‘‘Think, for
a while, about the city of Málaga itself; its streets,
neighbourhoods, squares and open spaces of any
type (large and small, attractive or unattractive…);
think about all the places you have been to or
seen.’’ After this, using the procedure followed in
Galindo’s (1994) study, participants were asked to
identify the three places in the city that were of
greatest visual interest to them (open question),
and state how often (in a question with closed
categories) they went to or passed by those places.
The rest of the questions referred exclusively to the
place that was their first choice; participants were
asked to complete the Spanish version (Hidalgo &
Hernández, 2001) of the Perceived Restorativeness
Scale (Korpela & Hartig, 1996), and a battery of
11 questions related to the (sensorial and semiotic)
aesthetic attributes identified by Nasar (1994,
1997) and those featured in the research by
Galindo (1994). Specifically, participants were
asked for their opinion about the extent to which
their first choice had the following characteristics:
(1) vegetation; (2) visual diversity/richness; (3)
harmony/congruence between its different ele-
ments; (4) openness and/or spaciousness; (5)
luminosity; (6) a historic place or representative
of the city; (7) cleanliness; (8) maintenance/upkeep;
(9) place for leisure activities; (10) meeting place;
22 GALINDO AND HIDALGO
(11) a novel place. Participants had to assess each
characteristic on a 5-point scale with values
ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (a lot). Participants
were also asked to state how often they visited or
walked by their first choice. Once they had
completed the ‘‘attractive’’ places section, partici-
pants were asked to place themselves on the other
side of the aesthetic spectrum and name, in their
opinion, the three ‘‘most unattractive’’ places in
the city. These places were assessed with the same
variables as the ‘‘most attractive’’ places. Finally,
the questionnaire included a battery of questions
related to sample identification data considered
to be variables of interest in the study (gender,
age, length of residence in the city, level of
familiarity with the city, and the extent to which
they identify with the city).
RESULTS
‘‘Most attractive’’ and ‘‘most unattractive’’
places in the city: General categorization
and frequency of use
First, all the first choices were recorded and
classified depending on the type or category of
place to which they belonged. As a provisional
instrument, the general system of categories
obtained in Galindo’s (1994) study was used.
The analysis of the characteristics of the spatial
and functional configuration of the places men-
tioned by the participants yielded a total of five
categories, three of which were the same as in
Galindo’s (1994) study: ‘‘cultural-historical
places,’’ ‘‘recreational places for leisure and/or
walking,’’ and ‘‘housing areas.’’ However, our
findings suggested that two new categories not
considered in the aforementioned study should be
introduced: ‘‘panoramic places’’ and ‘‘industrial
places,’’ while the category ‘‘places for having fun’’
was excluded. Table 1 shows the representativeness
of each of the categories established in the list of
TABLE 1
Frequency of most attractive and most unattractive places associated with each established category
Frequency
Recreational places (for leisure or walking)
Cultural-historical places
Panoramic places
Housing areas
Industrial places
the most attractive and unattractive places in the
city (those in the first place), from the percentage
of responses in each category.
The data shown in Table 1 reflect a notable
difference in the percentages of responses asso-
ciated with each of the categories identified
depending on the aesthetic label (‘‘attractive-
unattractive’’). The ‘‘attractive’’ places were
mainly grouped around the following categories:
‘‘recreational places’’ (mentioned by 38.75% of
participants), ‘‘historical-cultural places’’ (men-
tioned by 35.65%), and ‘‘panoramic places’’
(mentioned by 21.7%). On the other hand, these
three categories are scarce or even nonexistent in
the unattractive places, with the most numerous
being ‘‘housing areas’’ (73.17%), mostly working-
class housing estates, followed by ‘‘industrial
areas’’ (8.13%).
If we consider the specific places that form the
categories themselves, rather than the categories as
such, we find that 28 different places were
mentioned as the most attractive places, while
there were 45 most unattractive places. In aesthetic
terms, the most highly appreciated place in the city
was the Gibralfaro Castle (n526, 19.7%) and,
more specifically, the panoramic view of the city
from the castle, which is why it was placed in the
panoramic places category. In second place (n517,
12.9%) came the Paseo Marı́timo (the Promenade),
a long esplanade running along the seafront which
we placed in recreational places for leisure/walking.
In third and fourth position came two places
closely related to the city’s history (placed in the
category historical-cultural places): the Alcazaba,
an Arab fortress dating from the 11th century
(n515, 11.4%), and the Cathedral, built between
the 16th and 18th centuries (n514, 10.6%). The
rest of the places were mentioned by less than 10%
of the sample, with 13 places being mentioned by
just one participant (0.8% of the sample). As for
the most unattractive places, the most mentioned
was the neighbourhood of La Palmilla (n541,
30.8%), a working-class district with a high crime
Most Most
attractive places unattractive places
Percentage Frequency Percentage
50 38.75 7 5.69
46 35.65 9 7.21
28 21.70 0 0
4 3.10 90 73.17
1 0.70 10 8.13
 AESTHETIC JUDGEMENT OF URBAN SCENES 23

rate. The second, mentioned by 10.5% of subjects, TABLE 2

was another working-class area (housing area) with Characterization of most attractive and most unattractive
a high crime rate. The remaining places were places on the Perceived Restorativeness Scale
mentioned by less than 10% of participants, with ‘‘Most attractive’’ ‘‘Most unattractive’’
31 places being cited on just one occasion. Figure 1 place place
shows the frequency with which people visit these Subscales (PRS) M SD M SD
places: 11.5% go to the most attractive place daily
Being away 6.53 1.99 2.31 1.76
(against 7.8% who go to the most unattractive
Fascination 6.73 1.68 1.67 1.74
place); 18.3% go there once a week (11.6% go to Coherence 6.80 1.67 2.89 2.05
the most unattractive place); 14.5% go several Compatibility 6.32 2.02 2.00 1.68
times a month (10.9% to the most unattractive); Extent 7.00 1.73 3.56 1.81
24.4% go once a month (10.9% to the most General restorat. 6.66 1.45 2.35 1.16
unattractive); 21.4% have not been recently PRS: Perceived Restorativeness Scale. Values fall on a scale
(17.8% to the most unattractive place); 8.4% from 0 to 10 where lower values indicate, for example, lower
hardly ever go (31% to the most unattractive ‘‘being away.’’ Difference scores for the two types of places
place); and 1.5 have never gone to the most were statistically significant in all the subscales (p , .0001).
attractive place (10.1% to the most unattractive
place). Therefore, if we look at the percentages of
accumulated answers, 68.4% of the sample go at away (128)518.05, coherence (129)517.87, and
least once a month to the most attractive place, extent (128)517.81 (p , .0001 in all cases).
while the majority (58.8%) never, or hardly ever,
go to the places considered least attractive.
Characterization of ‘‘most attractive’’
and ‘‘most unattractive’’ places
Characterization of the ‘‘most attractive’’ according to the sensorial and
and ‘‘most unattractive’’ places on the semiotic aesthetic attributes
Perceived Restorativeness Scale
In order to meet the third objective, we calculated
The city’s ‘‘most attractive’’ places obtain high the average scores obtained by the attractive and
average scores on the Perceived Restorativeness unattractive places (the first choices) for each of
Scale (PRS), always over 6, in contrast to the the aesthetic attributes analysed. In addition, to
unattractive places whose values range from 1 to 3 check that the resulting differences were statisti-
on the scale (see Table 2). To check whether such cally significant, the T-test for related samples was
differences were statistically significant, the aver- used. As with the Restorativeness Scale, places in
age scores obtained were contrasted using the T- the city considered the most attractive obtained
test analytical procedure for related samples. All the highest scores in all the variables considered
the differences were statistically significant. The (see Figure 2). The analyses carried out showed
two types of scene differed both in general that the differences were statistically significant in
restorativeness (129)526.42, and in fascination all cases (p , .0001): novel place (128)512.42,
(128)524.59, compatibility (128)519.79, being facilities for leisure activities (125)510.57,

Figure 1. Frequency of use of most attractive and most unattractive places.

24 GALINDO AND HIDALGO

Figure 2. Average scores in the aesthetic attributes of the most attractive and unattractive places.

presence of vegetation (129)511.03, meeting place
(128)59.97, cleanliness (129)517.22, upkeep/
maintenance (128)517.18, harmony or congruence
of scenic elements (128)519.34, visual diversity or
richness (129)525.86, luminosity (128)59.52, his-
toric or emblematic place (128)519.12, openness
and spaciousness (128)512.71.
Relationship between the Perceived
Restorativeness Scale and the aesthetic
attributes
A correlation analysis was performed between the
aesthetic attributes and the scores on the Perceived
Restorativeness Scale. The results are shown in
Table 3. Of the different attributes evaluated, five
correlate significantly (p , .01) with restorative
capacity: harmony, openness, luminosity, suitabil-
ity for leisure, and meeting place. Of these, the last
two, along with openness, also present significant
correlations with the five subscales, although in
some cases at a lower level (p , .05) of significance
(with the exception of the correlation between
harmony and fascination, which is not significant).
On the other hand, it is worth pointing out that in
our study the presence of vegetation, a character-
istic closely related to the restorative capacity of a
place, does not present a significant correlation
with the total scale or with any of the factors.
Neither does the level of upkeep/maintenance, a
variable closely associated with a preference for
urban spaces, present a significant correlation with
the PRS. The three remaining attributes—diversity,
cleanliness, and historical characteristics—present
correlation values that, although low, are in some
cases significant at a reliability level of .05.
DISCUSSION
The analysis of the characteristics of the most
attractive and most unattractive places in the city

TABLE 3
Correlations between the aesthetic attributes and the Perceived Restorativeness Scale

Being away Fascination Coherence Compatib. Extent General restorat.

Vegetation .08 .14 .21 .07 .11 .14

Visual richness .10 .15 .14 .00 .17* .13
Congruence .26** .15 .26** .18* .26** .27**
Openness .30** .23** .27** .28** .38** .36**
Luminosity .19* .15 .16 .30** .17* .26**
Historical place 2.12 .02 2.07 2.20* .06 2.09
Cleanliness .05 .11 .20* .05 .19* .13
Maintenance 2.13 .07 2.01 2.04 .00 2.04
Facilities for leisure .20* .30** .18* .46** .19* .35**
Meeting place .30** .21* .28** .43** .22** .37**

*p,.05 (bilateral); **p,.01 (bilateral).


identified in the study has allowed us to establish
the existence of five broad aesthetic categories of
urban scenes: (1) recreational places for leisure/
walking, (2) historical/cultural places, (3) places
with panoramic views, (4) housing areas, and (5)
industrial areas. The first three categories men-
tioned form 96% of the visually most attractive
places; the last two groupings form the majority of
the settings considered most unattractive. Three
categories (historical-cultural places, recreational
places, and housing areas) agree with the char-
acterization made in Galindo’s (1994) study, which
was used as a provisional instrument in this study.
In our opinion, this suggests that the function and
historical value (cultural representativity) of a
particular scene—in other words, its social leg-
ibility, to use Stokols and Shumaker’s (1981)
term—seem to constitute two important dimen-
sions providing the basis for the establishment of
aesthetic categories that are important in urban
contexts. Although the function of a scene has
been an important selection criterion in urban
landscape preference studies that have incorpo-
rated photographic stimuli, the historical-cultural
dimension has been rather neglected. The impor-
tance that this dimension acquires when evalua-
tion procedures are developed that facilitate its
appearance seems to confirm the need for its
inclusion in contextualized analyses in scenes that
are familiar to and/or known by subjects.
The groupings labelled ‘‘places with panoramic
views’’ and ‘‘industrial areas’’ provide two cate-
gories not included in Galindo’s (1994) previous
study. The first category groups together 21.7% of
the scenes identified as the most attractive and
includes the place that was named in first position
by the greatest number of subjects, the Gibralfaro
Castle. This place presents a set of physical
characteristics that help explain its high scenic
evaluation. It is an Arab fortress dating from the
14th century, which was built into the side of a
mountain that was originally beyond the city
walls. The site was chosen for its strategic position,
overlooking the city and the sea beyond. Due to
growth and expansion it has now become part of
the city, although certain planning laws have
limited urban development in its immediate
surroundings. It has therefore managed to pre-
serve a significant amount of the surrounding
vegetation and is an important transit point
between the city and nature. The visual config-
uration characteristics of this place tie in directly
with Appleton’s (1975) prospect-refuge theory,
according to which the qualities of the setting that
make it aesthetically preferred allow one to see
without being seen (refuge) and provide a wide
AESTHETIC JUDGEMENT OF URBAN SCENES 25
viewing area (prospect). The settings that possess
these characteristics—in other words, that allow
the individual to observe the scene from a safe
viewing point and with a wide perspective (open
places)—will also be the aesthetically preferred
settings. The last of the categories, the ‘‘industrial
areas,’’ represents the second most frequently
selected unattractive places, which, together with
the role this variable has in studies of environ-
mental preference, confirms it as a category to be
taken into account in future urban landscape
samples.
The differences found between this study and
Galindo’s (1994) may be due to the different
characteristics of the geographical settings evalu-
ated. The city of Seville lacks public places that
could be clearly identified as panoramic places,
and in Málaga the ‘‘places for having fun,’’ a
category in the Seville study that does not appear
in this one, are spread throughout the city and not
concentrated in one geographical area. The
‘‘industrial areas’’ category is one that appeared
in the responses to the most unattractive areas, a
quality that was not evaluated in the first study. In
any case, the categories that have emerged in the
present study should be confirmed in other
geographical settings and using other nonexplora-
tory procedures; an aim that we consider to be of
great importance for research in this field.
Another of the goals of the present study was to
explore the role that the restorative capacity of a
place, in terms of the Attentional Restoration
Theory, may play in its aesthetic evaluation. To do
this, subjects evaluated two places (the ones
considered most attractive and most unattractive)
using the Spanish version (Hidalgo & Hernández,
2001) of the Perceived Restorativeness Scale
(Korpela & Hartig, 1996). The results obtained
show that the restorative capacity of a place seems
to be a characteristic dimension of those places
considered to be attractive. These places obtained
a high score both on the general scale (average
6.66) and on the five subscales, with values ranging
from 6.32 in the ‘‘compatibility’’ factor and 7.00 in
the ‘‘extent’’ factor (see Table 2). These results
support those obtained by Korpela and Hartig
(1996) and Korpela et al. (2001), in which they
analysed the differences in restorative capacity
between favourite places and hostile/disagreeable
places. In the latter study, the greatest differences
between the two types of place were recorded in
the subscales of evasion and compatibility.
However, the results of our research—given the
objective of characterizing the main scenic
resources of a city—show that the main differences
between attractive and unattractive places seem to
26 GALINDO AND HIDALGO
lie in the characteristics grouped in the fascination
subscale. This subscale includes aspects related to
the quantity of information available in the
evaluated place and is closely related to the
psychological exploration process considered to
be one of the basic cognitive requirements linked
to environmental aesthetics in Attentional Resto-
ration Theory (see, for example, Kaplan & Kaplan,
1989). In short, the results mentioned support the
suggestions of recent studies (Peron et al., 2002;
Purcell et al., 2001) that the restorative capacity
of a specific place may constitute one of the
implicit scenic quality criteria used by subjects in
their aesthetic judgements.
Furthermore, the scores that the attractive and
unattractive places obtained regarding the aes-
thetic attributes included in this study demonstrate
their suitability in the study of aesthetic prefer-
ences, and therefore suggest that these attributes,
together with restorative capacity, constitute
important criteria for determining scenic quality.
The relation that could be established between
both types of criteria raises a theoretical and
empirical issue that could be dealt with in future
studies. The results of the correlation analyses
between the score obtained in the PRS and these
attributes—developed in an exploratory manner in
this work—suggest that restorative places tend to
be open, luminous, and coherent, and are places
for leisure and for meeting people. It is, however,
surprising that the presence of vegetation, a
characteristic closely related to the restorative
capacity of a place in other research, did not have
a significant relationship with the factors on the
Perceived Restorativeness Scale. Given the
exploratory nature of these analyses, it may be
premature to venture an explanation. The possi-
bility does exist, however, that other aesthetic
attributes, such as those mentioned here, might
have a greater influence on the evaluation of a
place as a restorative setting. Future research
along these lines will clarify this hypothesis.
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