1. Introduction
In the urban context, losing daily contact with natural environment causes people’s constant tiredness and anxiety, which might lead to mental illness [
1], especially for elderly people who are used to natural environment and children who have limited access to and interest in natural environment nowadays [
2,
3]. For centuries, humans have tried to transform natural vegetation into tended vegetation, yet comparing to the former, human-controlled vegetation has limited ecological values as well as aesthetical values [
4,
5]. Recent evidence suggests that natural landscapes are more appreciated and valued than tamed nature; for instance, meadows are generally preferred to formal bedding plants [
6,
7]. There has been an ecological planning trend to introduce natural vegetation back into urban ecosystems [
8,
9,
10], to create deep connections with the natural world for the benefit of people and to balance the relationship between people and nature [
11,
12,
13], and deciduous landscape is certainly part of it.
Deciduous landscape is a scenery made up of unswept fallen leaves, which creates a precious seasonal view in urban cities [
14]. For decades, it seemed that fallen leaves in cities were supposed to be cleaned up immediately to keep the streets neat; however, as people realized the importance of cooperating with energies put into play by nature [
15], this natural scenery started to be valued [
16]. In 2013, Shanghai Forestry Bureau issued a policy to leave it be and keep this seasonal natural scenery; this policy was responded to well, and several other cities followed, which led to a new “fashion” in China [
16,
17]. There were many reports about this unique view as well as people’s reactions, most people enjoy having this natural scenery in their lives, but they also had their concerns [
18,
19]. Previous research has proven that low-maintenance vegetative landscapes tend to receive negative responses from the public [
20,
21]. Even though deciduous landscape provides people with a rare opportunity to embrace nature, it can also cause problems from the lack of management, which might lead to chaos or even dangers [
22], therefore seriously harming people’s needs and preferences [
23].
Aesthetic assessment is a process of interactions between the characteristics of landscape and the psychological responses of observers, which means that landscape preference is influenced by landscape itself as well as demographic characteristics of people [
24,
25,
26], such as their gender, age, education level, occupation, living environment, etc. [
27,
28,
29,
30]. In other words, even for the same landscape, people’s preferences can be significantly different [
31]. For instance, elderly people were found to have relatively low preference for wild natural landscapes [
25], when more than half of users of urban parks are elderly people who can be particularly disadvantaged if their specific need, preference or constraints are not considered in the planning process of parks or other kinds of urban landscapes [
32,
33]. Landscape is a key element of both individual and social well-being, and the public’s wish to enjoy high-quality landscapes needs to be responded to [
34]. While exploring the similarities of different people’s preferences helps us to guide the general planning, figuring out the differences among them allows us to sort out conditions of specific groups such as the elderly so that their needs would be met [
35].
Deciduous landscape has its benefits and drawbacks, which are likely to cause divided opinions. The authors’ previous research showed that people are generally more attracted to deciduous landscape if there is a large quantity of light yellow leaves falling over lawn and it goes with rest facilities [
14]. However, studies of deciduous landscape are still limited, and the existing studies fail to resolve the contradiction among different people’s preference of deciduous landscape. Thus, this paper attempts to investigate the following questions: (1) Which demographic characteristics have significant effects on people’s preference for deciduous landscape? (2) What kinds of deciduous landscapes are the most and least appreciated? Which deciduous landscape characteristics have dominant influence on the preference of different groups?
3. Results
3.1. Overall Evaluation of the Deciduous Landscape Photographs
The reliability of preference scores of the 40 photographs used in the questionnaire was tested. The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.965, which means the results have high reliability.
The mean preference score for each photograph was found to be widely distributed from 2.66 to 4.50, and the mean score of all photographs was 3.47, which generally showed preference for deciduous landscape. The photographs which were the most and least appreciated are shown respectively; a (mean ± SD: 4.50 ± 0.76) and b (4.43 ± 0.87) were given the highest mean score (
Figure 1), while a (2.66 ± 1.17) and b (2.67 ± 1.23) were given the lowest mean score (
Figure 2).
Using the mean preference scores of each picture and the characteristics of the deciduous landscape, the linear regression analysis showed that the color of the leaves was the only reliable predictor for landscape preference, while the amount of the leaves, underlying surface, planting method and other elements did not have significant effects.
3.2. Effects of Demographic Characteristics on Preference
By using linear regression analysis, significant differences were shown among the preference of people of different ages (p = 0.000) and different occupations (p = 0.010). There was no significant difference between different education level groups (p = 0.751) and, surprisingly, different gender groups (p = 0.761).
Among these four characteristics mentioned, the Spearman’s rank correlation analysis (
Table 3) only showed a significant correlation between preference scores and ages of respondents (positive). This significant correlation was further proved using the Jonckheere–Terpstra test; the result shows that “age” had a significant influence on preference of respondents while other characteristics did not.
3.3. Age Group Preference and Deciduous Landscape Characteristics
The overall tendency showed that people generally (other than children below 18) showed more preference for deciduous landscape as their age increased (
Figure 3), which ranked as: over 60 (mean ± SD: 3.75 ± 0.89), 40–49 (3.60 ± 0.74), 50–59 (3.58 ± 0.68), below 18 (3.54 ± 0.64), 30–39 (3.45 ± 0.81), 18–29 (3.40 ± 0.69). Interestingly, as the age increased, people’s intention to have deciduous landscape in their lives showed a downward trend, which conflicted with the growing preference (
Figure 4).
Using the mean preference scores of respondents of different ages, reliable predictors for preference were identified. The linear regression analysis showed that color was the only significant predictor for people under 49, while elderly people who were aged between 50 and 59 can also be affected by underlying surface, and for those over 60, the underlying surface becomes the only significant predictor (
Table 4).
Further analysis showed that while people of all ages were most attracted by deciduous landscape made up of red or light yellow leaves, people over 60 had a better tolerance toward dark yellow or other unpopular colors such as brown, gray and green. On the other hand, elderly people preferred the lawn as the underlying surface of deciduous landscape, and when the underlying surface included both lawn and road, their preference showed a dramatic decrease as the age increased.
Additionally, the following finding shows the same result: most respondents, regardless of their age, believed that the color of leaves is the most important factor for deciduous landscapes, but elderly people over 60 had a much higher percentage of choosing the rest facilities or the cleanness and safety of the road as the most important factor. While visiting deciduous landscape, elderly people have many other significant differences which are easy to explain: Firstly, compared to other age groups, they had the lowest interest in playing with the fallen leaves; Secondly, elderly people over 50 showed a more positive attitude toward other tourists when younger people tended to give up better deciduous landscape just because of the presence of the crowd; Finally, the acceptable traveling time for elderly people over 60 was significantly decreased compared to younger people, while their ideal residence time increased.
3.4. Other Demographic Groups’ Preference and Landscape Characteristics
People’s preference was only influenced by the color of leaves regardless of their occupation, while retired people were affected by the underlying surface (
Table 5), which agreed with the age differences. The average preference score for each occupation ranked as: social (mean ± SD: 3.63 ± 0.80), artistic (3.61 ± 0.74), investigative (3.58 ± 0.70), retired (3.56 ± 0.72), enterprising (3.46 ± 0.78), student (3.46 ± 0.68), realistic (3.39 ± 0.72), conventional (3.29 ± 0.76).
There was no significant difference between males and females; their reliable predictor was the color of fallen leaves (
Table 6). Females (3.48 ± 0.75) showed a slightly higher preference than males (3.47 ± 0.72); at the same time, they had more tendency to keep deciduous landscape in their lives and were more likely to interact with deciduous landscape.
For people with an education level below college, their preference was only affected by color, while graduates were also affected by the amount of leaves (
Table 7). Other than high school, the total trend showed that people have higher preference for deciduous landscape as their education level increases, which ranked as high school (3.68 ± 0.72), graduate (3.48 ± 0.63), college (3.45 ± 0.78), middle school (3.28 ± 0.68).
5. Conclusions
Understanding the needs and preferences of the target group is an important part of landscape planning: a landscape that considers different people’s preferences and perceptions can meet their needs better, therefore leading to physical satisfaction and positive mental health effects.
Nowadays, people are eager for improving their life quality and well-being from landscape, which requires cooperation with nature and artificial culture [
15], and therefore the importance of deciduous landscape has increased. This study, for the first time, explored preference for deciduous landscape of people with different demographic characteristics and provided theoretical support for deciduous landscape which is expected to be useful in both the planning and maintaining process. The results of this paper reveal that age can be a significant factor for deciduous landscape preference, which can be helpful to understand our target group in the planning process of deciduous landscape, especially elderly people. As a new trend in China, the deciduous landscape can strengthen the sense of belonging and well-being, but it cannot be a successful brand until all the local stakeholders are satisfied [
49,
55,
56]. Providing deciduous landscape that takes elderly people’s needs and preferences into consideration could increase the usage by elderly people and potentially improve their health, both physically and mentally. A well-maintained environment was proven to be effective to increase consensus in aesthetic preference judgment [
42]; while building deciduous landscapes, we should pay attention to safety and cleanness as well as beauty so that we can improve the preference of elderly people without excluding other age groups. We hope the findings of this study can provide theoretical support and guidance for the future development of deciduous landscape and therefore benefit people of all ages and ensure a balanced nature–city environment.