Toward Sustainable Urban Park Planning: Evaluating Daytime Lightscape Perception Along Walking Routes

Sustainable urban park planning requires attention to users’ experiences and perceived environmental quality. However, existing daytime lightscape studies have focused mainly on individual observation points, leaving perceptual variation along continuous walking routes and its relationship with overall evaluation insufficiently understood. This study examined 11 routes in three urban parks in Tianjin, China, using continuous pedestrian-view image sequences evaluated by 51 participants. Participants rated each route as a whole and retrospectively assessed attractiveness at self-defined Start, Middle, and End stages, together with the noticeability of lightscape changes between adjacent stages. Repeated-measures analyses revealed significant differences in overall evaluation among routes (p < 0.001), while a significant route × stage interaction (p = 0.027) indicated route-specific patterns of stage attractiveness rather than a common Start–Middle–End progression. Beyond these differences, linear mixed-effects models showed that overall evaluation was positively associated with both stage attractiveness and the noticeability of changes between adjacent stages. Although the three stages showed comparable associations with overall evaluation, perceived change from Start to Middle was more strongly associated with overall evaluation than change from Middle to End (p = 0.024). These findings support integrating overall route evaluation, stage attractiveness, and perceived transitions into user-centered lightscape assessment for sustainable urban park planning and management.