Materials Selection in Biophilic Building Design: Multisensory Perception and Psycho-Physical Mapping of Wood Materials

The selection of building materials increasingly prioritizes aesthetic and comfort-related experiences, yet the perceptual pathways linking physical properties to emotional judgments remain underexplored, particularly among Chinese users. This study aimed to clarify how different sensory modalities contribute to the perceptual pathways linking physical properties of wood to emotional judgments under multisensory conditions. Sixty young Chinese adults evaluated wood samples under visual, tactile, auditory, and multisensory conditions. Multivariate modeling approaches were applied to identify perceptual structures, mediating pathways to aesthetic judgments, and associations between subjective impressions and physical parameters. A three-factor perceptual structure was identified, comprising surface qualities, internal qualities, and emotional judgment. Path analyses showed that perceived cleanliness acted as the primary mediator from low-level perceptions to emotional responses, whereas naturalness played a limited role. Multisensory integration was vision-dominant (relative sensory weights from Bayesian weighted regression > 0.50), with touch providing secondary contributions (weights > 0.30) and audition exerting minimal influence. Lightness strongly predicted surface qualities, while density predicted internal qualities, with both achieving conditional and marginal R2 values above 0.50. In contrast, higher-order impressions showed strong between-group but weak individual-level explanatory power (marginal R2 < 0.30), indicating that physical parameters capture group-level tendencies but offer limited precision for individual emotional responses. These results inform culturally sensitive, multisensory design strategies for wood in biophilic and human-oriented environments and highlight the need to incorporate non-physical factors for precise personalization.