%0 Journal Article
%T Illuminating for Safety: Investigating the Role of Lighting Appraisals on the Perception of Safety in the Urban Environment
%A Antal Haans
%A Leon van Rijswijk
%J Environment and Behavior
%@ 1552-390X
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/0013916517718888
%X In two studies, we took a prospect¨Crefuge based perspective to investigate how lighting and other physical attributes (i.e., prospect, concealment, and entrapment) affect people¡¯s judgments of the safety of urban streets during nighttime. Both studies complement existing research, which predominantly use factorial designs, with more ecologically valid correlational research using a large and representative sample of urban streets as stimulus materials. Results from Study 1 corroborate existing research demonstrating that differences in prospect, concealment, and entrapment predicted, to a large extent, variation in the perceived safety of urban streets¡ªthus demonstrating the utility of such environmental information for making safety judgments in real-life settings. Results from a mediation analysis conducted in Study 2 showed that the relation between appraisals of lighting quality and safety judgments was completely accounted for by co-occurring variation in appraisals of prospect and entrapment. Implications for theory and methodology are discussed
%K urban environments
%K environmental perception
%K safety perceptions
%K lighting
%K prospect¨Crefuge theory
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0013916517718888