**1. Introduction**

Signboards (outdoor advertisements) traditionally provide information about stores and help consumers make decisions on purchasing goods when consumers tour cities or engage in consumer activities. Consumers accept visually presented information through their eyes. At this time, if the visual elements of the signboard are made in conformity with the consumer's visual principles, the consumer at some point recognizes that the signboard has already been perceived and processed for memory [1]. As such, signboards are crucial elements of commercial streets and may be one of the most effective ways of delivering information.

The signboard is one of the characteristics of the streetscapes of Korean commercial districts. In particular, in places such as Seoul where there is an excessive population and commercialization density, the indiscriminate signboards for advertisements of stores located on commercial streets raise aesthetic issues. Yoon [2] found that experts in the project for street maintenance selected signboard arrangemen<sup>t</sup> as the most essential issue. To solve this problem, Seoul sought to improve the aesthetics of the city by implementing regulations on the quantity and size of outdoor advertising signs through its campaign, "Creating Beautiful Streets". However, regarding these regulations, the shop owners were concerned about negative impacts in terms of advertising effects, resulting in backlash.

So far, in various studies related to signboards in Korean cases, signboards have been generally discussed as a negative factor. Research shows that indiscriminately designed signboards have a visually negative effect on streetscapes [3]. As the number and types of signboards increase, the aesthetic value decreases, and a decrease in signboards seems to increase pleasantness [4–6]. The signboards of stores can be a negative influence on the aesthetic of the streetscape ye<sup>t</sup> are essential to commercial streets. The importance of such signboards also appears in Kim et al. [7], where signboards are the most urgen<sup>t</sup> negative factor that needs improvement, even while they are the most impressive factor to note. Many studies have thus sought to find improvements in signboard management.

Kim et al. [8] focused on the direction of signboard managemen<sup>t</sup> for streetscapes. First, the size, surface, color, quantity, and lighting of signboards may not be suitable for street environments, so guidelines need to be improved. Second, the materials and lighting of signboards need improvement. Third, restrictions on new methods such as occupancy on the building surface regarding the installation of signboards in relation to the legal system are effective, as well as to focus on the design aspect rather than quantitative regulation and make use of local characteristics. In this context, many other studies indicated that it is important to establish a consistent managemen<sup>t</sup> system to harmonize with the existing environment and to deliver a unified image reflecting the unique identity of each industry by region [9–12]. Meanwhile, the continuity and unity of the signboard in the streetscape are emphasized in the literature. Cho [13] said that the signs' size and spacing should be constant to give a sense of unity, suggesting several colors or using similar colors to give a sense of unity and rhythm. Additionally, the colors of the surrounding buildings must be considered to keep harmony with the colors of the signboards and colors that provide psychological stability and pleasure [12]. In terms of visual continuity, it is necessary to consider continuity between facades considering the behavior, color, and material of the facade in order to convey the pedestrian's horizontal use or effective advertising purpose. Lee and Song [14] found it is necessary to secure horizontal continuity that fits the movement and gaze of pedestrians rather than vertical continuity at the lower and upper floors.

Then why are signboards so important in commercial streets? Signboards serve as a medium for mutual communication and advertisements. However, in modern urban streets, signboards are an important factor in determining the streetscape beyond simple means of information delivery [11]. In this study, the importance of signboards is to be investigated whether or not they form an active image of the street visually rather than transmitting information. Commercial streets should be attractive, and visitors should feel that the street is active. Among the sensory organs of people, the dependence on vision is absolute, and visual vitality is generated through the perception of the physical environment of the streetscape.

According to Gestalt theory, perception in morphology is understood as a holistic process. In other words, the physical elements that form the streetscape are perceived as a single scene, rather than individually [15]. The main laws of Gestalt psychology concern proximity, similarity, continuity, closedness, simplification, equivalence, foreground and background, and familiarity. Among them, the foreground and background are mainly discussed in urban landscapes. Within given visibility, certain forms or objects stand out and others do not attract attention. The outstanding form is called the foreground, and other elements are called the background [15]. The foreground and the background also appear variously in street space. The first thing a pedestrian sees when walking along the street would be a building that is consecutively built along the side of the street. If you look at the building as the foreground, the sky and the floor will naturally become the background. After that, if you observe the interior in detail, the building becomes the background, the signboards, windows, and show windows in the building become the foreground, or the green space such as a street tree in the street may be the foreground and other things will be the background. As such, the signboard in the streetscape has a strong character of being a foreground element. The foreground element induces people's attention and interest and can inspire vitality in the street. Chen [16], as a result of simulation of pedestrian behavior, found signboards attract pedestrians' interest and induce behavior.

The signboard itself can be an attractive element that attracts people's attention, serves as a foreground, and infuses people's interest and street vitality as part of the streetscape. Therefore, this study examines whether there is a difference in interest or vitality felt in the streets according to people's gaze patterns on signboards for representative commercial streets in Seoul and provides implications for the future function and importance of signboards in streetscape managemen<sup>t</sup> of the commercial street.

### **2. An empirical Approach to Landscape Analysis**

People are affected by the physical environment of the city. The environment is perceived and the relationship between the environment and people is established. A Zube et al. [17] model shows feedback on what people find interesting and impressive in their interactions with the physical environment. By studying the interactions with each other and the contents that occur within them, implications for a better urban environment can be found. The landscape is a form of physical space, and humans see and perceive the landscape through sight and subjectivity. However, since humans observe landscapes based on personal, social, cultural, and environmental characteristics, even spaces with the same physical conditions can be perceived differently depending on the characteristics of humans or groups. Lynch [18] would be a representative researcher who, through mapping, has found out how people perceive images of the cities they live in. He conducted an analysis of the city's image through "cognition", which stems from people's experiences or memories of a particular environment and is the process of creating likes and dislikes. Cullen [19] is a representative researcher regarding the urban environment and people's visual perspective. He perceived the urban landscape from a continuous perspective and said that the urban landscape should be designed from a visual perspective.

Craik [20] set the framework for a research methodology that measures and analyzes people's responses to the environment. A methodology was prepared to measure how people think about the environment through four factors: "Environmental Displays", "Media of Presentation", "Observers", and "Response Formats". The perception-based method targeting the general public emphasizes the aspect of the observer, the human, on quality of the landscape, and is an evaluation of the landscape based on visual perception [21–23]. However, this methodology has its limitations because there is no consensus on what the aesthetic quality of the landscape is. Accordingly, Vining and Stevens [24] presented a model that requires dual feedback from the expert and the public on the landscape. Landscapes that visually evoke positive feelings are evaluated as of high quality, and landscapes that evoke negative feelings are evaluated as low quality. It is necessary to objectively measure the visual quality of subjective values, which leads to the methodology of eye-tracking. However, the concentration of the gaze is not necessarily a positive signal. Therefore, a subjective survey must be conducted together to supplement this limitation. Eye-tracking is mainly used in fields such as interfaces and advertisements, but it has also been introduced in landscape-related fields and research is ongoing. Existing researches related to streetscape mainly rely on surveys from people's perceptions. This method has limitations because the data is measured based on the overall feeling, not knowing where people look specifically to feel that way.

Various studies analyzed the landscape and the perspective of people. As a result of analyzing the landscape bordering the river, the study in Cottet et al. [25] found that nature has a longer time of fixed gaze in urban and natural scenes. In addition, Holmes and Zanker [26] demonstrated the correlation between aesthetic preference and average gaze fixation time. Looking at the contents of these two studies, it is likely that those with high aesthetics like nature will have a high gaze-inducing effect. However, being natural does not necessarily mean that the gaze fixation effect is high. People's gazes are the focused points in the landscape is a point factor. Among the landscape elements, the elements that focus people's attention are the ones that are emphasized. A transition phenomenon occurs where the natural environment becomes a visual attention factor in artificial facilities and artificial facilities become a visual attention factor in natural environments [27,28]. The study by Li et al. [29] shows that the attention is focused on the letters at the sign or entrance in the streetscape, and the more understandable the letters are, the higher the eye fixation is. Elements such as letters on a signboard have a higher amount of information than a picture or a simple wall, and in order to understand this, the human eye causes fixation of the gaze. Since store information transmission is an important factor in selling products, gaze distribution studies on signboards, displays, and directions during shopping were also conducted [30,31].

Landscape analysis has been carried out by various methodologies so far, and it has reached the stage of analyzing by tracking a person's gaze. As a result of reviewing previous studies, fixation of gaze in the landscape is an element that becomes a point, and in the case of a streetscape, signboards, and letters can become the point. A high gaze fixation effect means that visual communication is active, which can be an element that can induce interest in people. Therefore, it is believed that the analysis can provide more precise implications for landscape design by using a questionnaire survey, which is subjective data, and distribution of gaze, which is objective data, and this study proceeds with the following methodology.
