Visual Saliency and Attention to Aquaculture Eco-Labels: A Within-Participant Reanalysis of Eye-Tracking Data
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.64747/c6680157Keywords:
eco-labels, visual saliency, eye tracking, sustainable design, visual attentionAbstract
Eco-labels compete with other graphic elements for limited attentional resources, yet greater computational prominence does not necessarily imply faster capture or sustained processing. This study reanalyzed a public eye-tracking dataset to estimate how the identity of five aquaculture eco-labels, their Graph-Based Visual Saliency (GBVS), and presentation position were related to visual attention. The file contained 160 complete observations from 32 participants, with five labels per person. Time to first fixation, time spent, fixation count, and average fixation duration were analyzed. Outcomes were log-transformed; participant fixed effects were removed through within-participant centering, and presentation position was controlled. Inference used 1,999 within-participant permutations, 2,000 participant-clustered bootstrap resamples, and Holm correction. Label identity did not conclusively explain time to first fixation (partial R² = 0.043; adjusted p = 0.2525), but it explained time spent (partial R² = 0.318; p = 0.0020), fixation count (partial R² = 0.195; p = 0.0020), and average fixation duration (partial R² = 0.140; p = 0.0060). For each additional standard deviation of GBVS, time spent increased by 18.6%, fixation count by 11.1%, and average fixation duration by 6.7%; the association with first fixation was inconclusive. Saliency was more closely related to sustained viewing and processing than to initial capture. Because GBVS was constant for each label identity, the findings do not identify a causal saliency effect independent of other graphic attributes.
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