Buildings, Vol. 16, Pages 2768: Winter Visual Perception Mechanisms in Cold-Region Outdoor Public Spaces: A Built-Environment Framework for Eye-Tracking-Based Evaluation and Design

Buildings, Vol. 16, Pages 2768: Winter Visual Perception Mechanisms in Cold-Region Outdoor Public Spaces: A Built-Environment Framework for Eye-Tracking-Based Evaluation and Design

Buildings doi: 10.3390/buildings16142768

Authors:
Jiaqi Zhang
Xiaoyang Guo

Outdoor public spaces are important built-environment settings that support health, social interaction, psychological restoration, and everyday urban life. In cold-region cities, however, winter conditions such as low temperature, snow and ice, short daylight, reduced vegetation, low solar altitude, and declining outdoor activity substantially weaken their usability, attractiveness, and vitality. Existing studies have mainly addressed these problems through thermal comfort, microclimate adaptation, snow safety, and physical environmental optimization, but they provide limited explanation of how users visually perceive winter spaces, allocate attention, and form subsequent spatial interpretations, perceptual evaluations, and behavioral intentions. To address this gap, this conceptual article develops a built-environment framework for explaining winter visual perception mechanisms and proposes an agenda for future eye-tracking-based validation. Through conceptual synthesis across cold-region public-space research, outdoor thermal comfort, environmental psychology, landscape visual perception, eye-tracking studies, public-space behavior, and architectural and built-environment design, the study conceptualizes winter public spaces as seasonal perceptual environments. It identifies five categories of winter visual stimuli: surface-related, vegetation-related, building interface-related, lighting-related, and activity-related stimuli. The framework clarifies how visual attention may serve as an observable mediating process between winter visual stimuli and inferred spatial interpretation, perceptual evaluation, and behavioral intention. Rather than empirically confirming these relationships, the article formulates a testable conceptual model and future validation agenda that should be examined through eye-tracking, behavioral observation, subjective evaluation, and environmental measurements. For architectural and built-environment research, the framework provides a theoretical basis for evaluating and optimizing façades, ground-floor interfaces, entrances, canopies, semi-outdoor spaces, path boundaries, lighting systems, vegetation configuration, and winter activity nodes.