An evaluation of the impact of visual attributes of park landscape spaces on the emotional benefits and behavioral intention of younger older adults

With the rising density of the elderly population, community parks, due to their high accessibility and flexibility, have become crucial resources for enhancing the physical activity levels of older adults and promoting inclusive elderly care. However, the relationship between the composition and configuration of landscape spaces and the behavioral intention and emotional benefits of older adults remains unclear. This study investigated the landscape spaces of community parks in three Chinese cities. Real-time psychological and physiological data were collected from participants by viewing sample photos, and physiological data on differential emotional arousal induced by specific visual stimuli were extracted using deconvolution techniques. Through descriptive statistics, differential analysis, correlation analysis, and mediation effect analysis, a mediation model comprising "visual attributes of park landscape space, behavioral intention for active activities, and emotional benefits" was constructed to explore the effective enhancement of the emotional states of older adults by different visual attributes of landscape spaces in community parks. (1) The landscape space visual attributes regarding positive emotional arousal can be ranked as landscape spatial enclosure (LSE) > landscape spatial hue (LSH) > green space accessibility (GSA) > artificiality of landscape space (AoLS) (p < 0.001). (2) Landscape spaces with lower enclosure degrees could significantly improve the emotional benefits of the younger older adults (p < 0.001). However, their behavioral intention was attenuated as the enclosure degree decreased (p < 0.001), which resulted in impaired effectiveness (p < 0.001). (3) For the younger older adults, both GSA and AoLS influenced emotional benefits via behavioral intention (p < 0.001), with GSA showing a partial mediation effect and AoLS exhibiting a suppressor (inconsistent) mediation effect. An increase in green accessibility was correlated with an increase in behavioral intention (p < 0.05), while artificiality was negatively correlated with both behavioral intention (p < 0.001) and emotional benefits. (4) Emotional benefits were higher in cold color landscape spaces compared with warm color ones (p < 0.001). Meanwhile, the indirect effect of LSH via behavioral intention was small and negative; however, this pathway accounted for a relatively minor proportion of the total effect and was outweighed by the significant positive direct effect of cool tones on emotional benefits (p < 0.001). Among the four visual attributes of landscape spaces, landscape enclosure has the most significant impact on the level of positive emotional arousal. However, the mechanism by which visual perception of thermal comfort effectively enhances the role of enclosure in emotional benefits has previously been overlooked by researchers and warrants further investigation in future studies to better understand the role of visual factors in effectively improving the emotional benefits for older adults.