Empirical studies of the perceived scenic beauty of forest settings have followed either the psychophysical or psychological traditions of environmental-perception research. Although psychophysical models of forest scenic beauty have proven useful to resource managers, they tend to lack theoretical content. On the other hand, psychological research often fails to produce results directly applicable to landscape management. This paper reports on an analysis combining the strong points of both the psychophysical and psychological approaches to environmental-preference research. Psychological theories of aesthetic response are used to deduce a variable, visual penetration, which is evaluated in psychophysical models of forest scenic beauty. Visual penetration is shown not only to be a significant positive contributor to explained variance, but also to be more important in accounting for scenic beauty evaluations than measures more typical of psychophysical models.
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