Formal and Nonformal Stimulus Factors in Environmental Preference

Abstract

Many authors are distinguishing formal and nonformal bases of environmental preferences but few studies provide estimates of effect sizes. This article reports a factorial experiment crossing a formal factor of amount of midground wirh a nonformal factor of which the categories were nature, old buildings, and new buildings. It was found that the nonformal factor accounted for more population preference variance than did the formal factor. In addition, the respondents preferred the narural scenes over the built scenes and the old buildings over the new buildings. Finally, the amount of preference variance attributable to the respondents was much less than the amount attributable to the stimuli or to the interaction of respondent by stimulus (6% vs 46% and 47%, respectively).