AESTHETIC PREFERENCE OF RECREATIONAL LANDSCAPE SETTINGS IN EGYPTIAN COASTAL ENVIRONMENTS

Considerable evidence suggests that plants are prominent to aesthetic preference of environments. Egyptian coastal environments tolerated intensive development project in last two decades. Diverse plantation has been a major component of landscape design of most projects. Few researches investigated the contribution of plantation to the aesthetic preference of these environments. This paper has two aims. Firstly, it seeks to establish the role of plants attributes in prediction of preference of recreational landscape settings in Egyptian coastal environments. Secondly, it seeks to identify the landscape categories that exist in these environments. Literature review identified a number of aesthetic preference factors that are associated to plants. Ninety-one Participants rated 30 photographs of recreational landscapes in Egyptian coastal settings. Non-metric factor analysis revealed five landscape categories embodied in participants responses, include: distant background; humanmade landscapes; tree-dominated landscapes; shrub -rich landscapes and ground cover-dominated landscapes. Results showed that plant attributes contributed considerable to aesthetic preference of shrub -rich and ground cover-dominated landscapes, where Kaplans variables predicted preference in all five categories. This research recommends replication of the present findings for different types of environments including, urban, suburban, rural, and natural environments.