Perception modeling based on vision and touch: “authenticity” of leather defined through observational experience

Nowadays, numerous products use artificial leather as it is a cost-effective alternative to genuine leather. However, products made from artificial leather may leave impressions on consumers that are dissimilar to those left by products made of genuine leather. In other words, products that use artificial leather but are perceived as genuine leather are more attractive to consumers. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to understand and quantify the factors that affect the mechanism via which consumers perceive a leather product to be made of genuine leather. We conducted several experiments to evaluate the hypothesis regarding human perception. Measurement experiments were performed to obtain the visual and physical properties of such impressions. We estimated the representative impressions formed by people during their interaction with leather samples through subjective experiments and derived models of these impressions in terms of the measured properties. Subjective evaluation experiments were performed under visual, tactile, and visual–tactile conditions. Finally, we quantified leather “authenticity” using these representative impressions. Participants, who are general consumers, were divided into two groups according to their familiarity with leather. The “authenticity” perception model of the group familiar with leather was constructed under visual and visual–tactile conditions, whereas the model of the group unfamiliar with leather was constructed under visual–tactile conditions, suggesting the influence of a cross-modal phenomenon. The results of this study can be applied to develop attractive artificial leather, which is expected to contribute to the protection of animal rights while promoting the sale of artificial leather products.