Exploring the influence of plant form barriers and naturalness on visitors’ perceptions to park landscapes: a study of interactions between safety, privacy and preference

Abstract

Safety is often considered a priority when designing and maintaining urban parks. The need for privacy is much less frequently considered in this context, although the chance to seek out quiet places in a park may be an important motivation for visiting and may help to meet the social needs of city dwellers. Therefore, it is worth conducting research on people’s feelings and preferences, whereby the two variables of privacy and safety are examined simultaneously.

This study examined how the features of plant forms in a city park (the type of barriers they create and the naturalness of the plants) simultaneously affect sense of safety, privacy and preference, as well as the mechanism of the relationships between these three variables.

This study was based on intra-group factorial design, where respondents assessed park spaces presented in photos. The photos were manipulated based on AI (Artificial Intelligence) algorithms, as a result, 16 photos were devised according to the research plan: 2 (scene: with a path vs without a path) × 2 (naturalness: natural vs sculpted) × 4 (barriers; screen vs hideout vs functional barrier vs no barrier). The study, conducted in the form of an online survey using the CAWI (computer assisted web interview) method, involved 300 participants. Statistical analyses examined variance (repeated measures ANOVA) and mediating effects (mediation).

It was found that naturalness and barriers have different (opposite) effects on privacy and safety: in general, naturalness reduces safety and increases privacy, while barriers act in this way: the stronger the barrier, the greater the privacy and the weaker the sense of safety. Testing two mediation models (more precisely: suppression) confirmed that the positive impact of sense of privacy on preference is inhibited by sense of safety and vice versa – the positive impact of sense of safety on preference is inhibited by sense of privacy.

This research demonstrates that within the tested spatial features (barriers, naturalness), it is not possible to shape a space that simultaneously provides a high sense of privacy and safety. However, in places featuring plant barriers, sculpting greenery may strengthen the sense of safety while maintaining the privacy offered by the plant cover.