Road Landscape as a Product: Does it Satisfy Consumers’ Aesthetic Needs?

Abstract

The contemporary market laws and consumer society impose that road users are regarded to as consumers, and road landscape – as a product. In this context, consumers’ willingness to use the product is equivalent to road users’ willingness to drive on the road. Consumers’ fastidiousness induces to develop road landscape in a way which ensures satisfaction of drivers’ versatile needs, including the aesthetic ones. However, development of desirable-to-drive road landscape remains one of the challenges of land management. Hence, based on the analysis of aesthetic needs of road users, the paper proposes a framework for creation of desirable-to-drive road landscape. The research rests on photofixation, Kansei engineering, regression, correlation and descriptive analyses. The landscape of the main Lithuanian roads was investigated. The results show that the willingness to drive on a road depends on the level of tune of all the elements comprising the roadscape, the amount of positive impression left by the roadscape, roadscape’s pleasurability, level of sophistication, and skittishness. The guidelines for the development of desirable to drive road landscape are proposed, and the map of distribution of roadscape in Lithuania, according to the willingness to drive, is drawn.