Perspectives on urban lighting : pedestrian visual comfort and safety preferences

Wei, Lanlan (author), Bizjak, Grega (author), Svetina, Matija (author), Kobav, Matej Bernard (author)

This study investigates pedestrian preferences regarding outdoor public lighting, specifically examining their impact on the perception of visual comfort, safety and reassurance in different urban settings. Despite extensive research on lighting parameters and pedestrian safety perception in recent years, gaps remain in understanding how users perceive different lighting scenes in real nighttime environments. The laboratory study comprised 130 participants under 30 years old. Using real location data, we simulated four distinct urban lighting conditions using Dialux software and examined them in a dark laboratory setting. Participants viewed generated images of urban nighttime scenes of a well-known Ljubljana district and answered the questionnaire. The questions were about participants' walking habits in a nighttime environment and about their perception of safety and reassurance based on viewed images. All together nine different scenes were evaluated by participants. Our study employed various analytical approaches to examine the effects of height (low vs. high) of lighting poles and lighting uniformity (better vs. worse) on participants' perceptions of safety, visual comfort, reassurance and orientation ease. The results demonstrate a preference for lighting with good uniformity, particularly in areas with higher lamp posts, suggesting its vital role in enhancing visual comfort. These findings emphasize the significance of continuous lighting design in promoting pedestrian safety and visual comfort in urban environments.

• Language: English
• Keywords: pedestrian environmental psychology, pedestrian's perception of safety, urban lighting, visual comfort, environmental psychology, urban environments, illumination, pedestrians, visual perception, safety, preferences
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FF - Faculty of Arts; FE - Faculty of Electrical Engineering
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: Str. 1-5
• Numbering: Vol. 20, no. 1
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-171758
• UDC: 159.9:71:628.971.6
• ISSN on article: 1309-6915
• DOI: 10.14744/megaron.2025.84760
• COBISS.SI-ID: 247258371
• Publication date in RUL: 01.09.2025

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Megaron
• Shortened title: Megaron
• Publisher: Yildiz teknik üniversitesi
• ISSN: 1309-6915
• COBISS.SI-ID: 527176729

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
• Description: A creative commons license that bans commercial use, but the users don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: okoljska psihologija, urbano okolje, razsvetljava, pešci, vidno zaznavanje, varnost, preference