Integrating Field Audits and Visual Composition: A Multi-Source, Multilevel Study of In Situ Emotional Valence in Public Spaces

Public spaces are encountered through changing spatial configurations, yet evidence linking measurable route conditions to in situ emotional valence remains limited. This multi-site observational study examined associations between route-section image-semantic composition, physical spatial attributes, and five-category valence ratings. Twenty participants provided 378 valid ratings across 40 route sections in ten purposively selected public-space sites in Dalian, China, and Nomi and Kanazawa, Japan. Visual composition was derived from 433 quality-screened forward-facing photographs; physical measures included pavement-to-boundary width, element count, and soft-boundary condition and width. Cumulative-logit mixed models included participant and route-section random intercepts and adjusted for sampled setting. We assessed proportional-odds assumptions, 1000 setting-stratified site bootstraps, site-fixed within-site sensitivity, and leave-one-site-out prediction. No image-semantic balance retained an adjusted association. Greater conditional soft-boundary width showed a positive conventional association with more favourable valence in the primary model (β = 0.798; OR = 2.22; BH q < 0.001) and in the within-site analysis (OR = 1.56; BH q = 0.010). Although the conventional Hessian interval excluded the null (95% OR CI 1.62–3.04), the site-bootstrap β interval included zero (−0.003 to 1.404), and the physical-feature model did not improve held-out-site prediction. The finding is therefore a context-bound association requiring replication, not a causal or transferable design rule.