Species richness and flower color diversity determine aesthetic preferences of natural-park and urban-park visitors for plant communities

Understanding people's perceptions of biological communities has the potential to positively contribute to the rapid development and implementation of policies and institutions dedicated to the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems. In this study, we conducted a face-to-face questionnaire survey on natural-park and urban-park visitors to reveal their aesthetic preferences of photographs of real plant communities digitally manipulated to contain different levels of diversity. The photographs were manipulated to contain different numbers of flower colors (1 or 3 colors), species richness (3 or 6 species), and the presence of shrubs (present or absent). Respondents preferred plant communities with higher flower color diversity, higher species richness, and the absence of shrubs. When we asked respondents for their aesthetic preferences of the manipulated photographs where the number of flower colors was fixed to one, photographs displaying plant communities with more species richness and the absence of shrubs were preferred. Aesthetic preferences for plant communities and their determinants did not differ between natural-park and urban-park visitors. We can thus assume that species richness and flower color diversity determine aesthetic preferences for the moorland and grassland plant communities studied