Pedestrians’ alertness and perceived environmental safety under non-uniform urban lighting

The influence of urban lighting on the visual tasks of pedestrians is well known and, in line with this, numerous studies have explored the relationship between urban lighting and pedestrians’ feelings of safety. This earlier research has traditionally focused on minimal required illuminance for various visual performance tasks (e.g., obstacle detection and face recognition). However, this focus may have been too narrow, as other light-moderated factors, such as pedestrians’ general attentiveness to the environment, may also be important for safety. Despite this, psychological concepts related to the individuals’ attention, such as alertness, arousal and anxiety, have only rarely been considered in street lighting research to date. The current study takes a first step in this direction, by testing the sensitivity and direction of response of relevant metrics in a pilot study. We decided for a conceptual replication of a field experiment from 1916 and managed to partly replicate the findings (n = 29). Reaction speed (i.e., alertness) was fastest under lighting with lowest uniformity whereas perceived environmental safety was highest under uniform lighting. Concepts of energetic and tense arousal showed clear, opposite relationships with perceived environmental safety. Limitations of the present study, as well as implications for future research in this domain are discussed.