Do people prefer a landmark route over a shortest route?

ABSTRACT Landmarks play an important role in spatial cognition, and therefore should be considered as a part of pedestrian navigation. This research addressed the question of human preference for landmark routes that are generated based on landmarks over shortest-distance optimized routes. We investigated whether there are differences regarding navigation behavior, navigation satisfaction, route memorization, route communication, and route comparison between the shortest and the landmark route. We did not observe any differences for navigation behavior, route memorization, and route communication. We observed that for the landmark route the participants were significantly faster in reversing the route. Generally, we found out that the participants were more satisfied with the shortest route and preferred the shortest route. We found hints that this might result from environmental parameters, which seemed to have an impact on navigation satisfaction. Additionally, the participants perceived the routes to be longer than they really were.