Illuminating for Safety: Investigating the Role of Lighting Appraisals on the Perception of Safety in the Urban Environment.

In two studies, we took a prospect-refuge 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-thus 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.

The return trip effect: why the return trip often seems to take less time.

Three studies confirm the existence of the return trip effect: The return trip often seems shorter than the initial trip, even though the distance traveled and the actual time spent traveling are identical. A pretest shows that people indeed experience a return trip effect regularly, and the effect was found on a bus trip (Study 1), a bicycle trip (Study 2), and when participants watched a video of someone else traveling (Study 3). The return trip effect also existed when another, equidistant route was taken on the return trip, showing that it is not familiarity with the route that causes this effect. Rather, it seems that a violation of expectations causes this effect.