TY - JOUR T1 - Interpreting Scenic Beauty Estimates JF - Landscape Journal SP - 24 LP - 27 DO - 10.3368/lj.8.1.24 VL - 8 IS - 1 AU - R. Bruce Hull IV Y1 - 1989/03/20 UR - http://lj.uwpress.org/content/8/1/24.abstract N2 - Four difficulties in interpreting psychophysically-based scenic beauty estimates are discussed: the arbitrary sign and magnitude of the measure; the absence of information about value; the interval nature of the metric which prevents nonlinear transformations; and the extreme sensitivity of the measure which can make small managerially irrelevant differences seem large. Anchoring scenic beauty estimates to known and meaningful landscapes helps overcome these problems. A simple transformation of the scenic beauty metric enables a one unit change in a scenic beauty estimate to be interpreted as a one percent change in the scenic beauty available within a region, town, street, or project area. Even with this approach, interpreting the value of scenic beauty is difficult. ER -