A comparative evaluation of scenic assessment instruments for roadside landscapes

This project was initiated to revise the procedures for designation of scenic roads in Arizona. The portions of the procedures which required revision were viewpoint selection and the expert scenic assessment scale. A method for selecting viewpoints was developed based on mapping landscape character types. Three expert scenic assessment scales were evaluated for inclusion in the designation procedure based on the criteria of reliability, validity, generalizability, and utility. Psychology students' global judgements of scenic beauty provided the validity criterion. Three groups of landscape architecture students applied the three expert scales to allow evaluation of the other criteria. All three scales performed well on the selected criteria. The FHWA scale was superior overall. The results suggest that expert scenic assessment scales predict public preferences for a range of landscape types. When the reliability of scenic quality assessment scales is evaluated for the summed dimensions of the scales, reliability is improved substantially compared to previous research