Landscape themes emerging from the data included refuge, prospect,level of development, emotional content, and utility. These are called the psychophysical approach, the psychological approach, and the expert judge approach. The psychophysical approach seeks to measure quantities of physical stimuli and mathematically associate those quantities with a judgment of interest. The psychological approach, seeks to use concepts derived from cognitive and perceptual psychology to explain scenic beauty judgments. A common methodological approach within the psychological tradition is to present a photo set to a panel of nonexpert judges and have those judges rate the photos as to how well they like each scene.
Ratings are then subject to statistical clustering techniques such as factor analysis.
A third approach is frequently called the expert judge approach. In this approach a panel of expert judges assess landscapes on the basis of fonnal design principles such as line, form, texture, color, harmony , repetition, etc. Researchers have rarely integrated the above approaches. This project was the first step in a larger research program aimed at such integration. Our attempt at integrating the various research traditions is loosely based around a linguistic metaphor for landscape perception and cognition.