Dataset - The heart of a daily journey: How emotional are landmarks?

The objective of this study was to examines whether the spatial landmarks that people use during a familiar and frequently taken path possess an affective component. Participants completed an online questionnaire in which they were instructed to think of a route they take on a regular basis, and to name five landmarks that spontaneously came to their mind along that path. After reporting these landmarks, participants were asked to rank them by order of importance and to indicate the emotion that they associated with them in terms of valence and arousal. Individual characteristics of participants (age, gender, activity, home environment, etc.), the specific features of their path (departure and arrival, distance travelled, mode of transport, etc.), and the nature of the landmarks reported were also considered.
Our hypotheses were that a significant proportion of the landmarks reported by participants should be affecively laden and that this affective value would be linked to their subjective importance. As regards the nature of landmarks reported, we expected to observe a majority of buildings, but also a significant proportion of road infrastructureand natural elements.
The results obtained indicate that, irrespective of individual characteristics, participants predominantly reported positively valenced, highly arousing landmarks. Depending on their nature and associated emotions, different landmark profiles emerged, with a positive correlation between a landmark’s valence and its subjective importance. Overall, these findings confirm the existence of an affective component in most of the landmarks used by individuals in their everyday life and corroborate the relevance of the recent line of research studying its impact on spatial learning.

Description of the content of the CSV file: Each line corresponds to a participant's response and contains their socio-demographic information (gender, age, type of environment of residence, activity), each of the 5 landmarks they reported with their associated valence and arousal score, subjective importance rank, the category into which they were classified (according to their nature, translated into English) as well as the characteristics of the route reported (duration, approximate length, mode of transport used, frequency of travel, departure and arrival etc.).

本研究旨在探究：人们在熟悉且常行经的路径中所使用的空间地标（spatial landmarks）是否带有情感属性。参与者需完成一份在线问卷，首先回忆一条日常固定通行的路线，并列出沿该路线自发浮现于脑海中的5处地标。报告上述地标后，参与者需按重要性对其进行排序，并从效价（valence）与唤醒度（arousal）两个维度说明其与各地标相关联的情绪特征。本研究同时收集了参与者的个体特征（年龄、性别、日常活动、居住环境等）、通行路线的具体参数（出发地、目的地、出行距离、交通方式等）以及所报告地标的属性特征。

本研究提出如下假设：参与者所报告的地标中，有相当比例带有情感负荷；且该情感价值与其主观重要性存在关联。就地标属性而言，我们预期多数地标为建筑类设施，同时亦有可观比例的道路基础设施与自然元素。

研究结果显示：无论参与者个体特征如何，其报告的地标多为正效价、高唤醒度的地标。根据地标的属性与关联情绪，可划分出不同的地标类型，且地标效价与其主观重要性呈正相关。总体而言，本研究结果证实，个体日常通行所使用的多数地标均包含情感属性，同时验证了近期聚焦于情感属性对空间学习影响的研究方向的合理性。

CSV文件内容说明：每一行对应一位参与者的问卷作答数据，包含其社会人口学信息（性别、年龄、居住环境类型、日常活动）、所报告的5处地标各自对应的效价与唤醒度得分、主观重要性排名、按属性划分的地标类别（以英文标注），以及所报告通行路线的特征（通行时长、大致距离、使用的交通方式、出行频率、出发地与目的地等）。