Abstract
One of the aims of outdoor lighting in public spaces, such as pathways and subsidiary roads, is to help pedestrians to evaluate the intentions of other people. This paper discusses how a pedestrians' appraisal of another persons' intentions in artificially lit outdoor environments can be studied. We review the visual cues that might be used, and the experimental design with which effects of changes in lighting could be investigated to best resemble the pedestrian experience in artificially lit urban environments. Proposals are made to establish appropriate operationalisation of the identified visual cues, choice of methods and measurements representing critical situations. It is concluded that the intentions of other people should be evaluated using facial emotion recognition; eye-tracking data suggest a tendency to make these observations at an interpersonal distance of 15 m and for a duration of 500 ms. Photographs are considered suitable for evaluating the effect of changes in light level and spectral power distribution. To support investigation of changes in spatial distribution, further investigation is needed with three-dimensional targets. Further data are also required to examine the influence of glare.
Highlights
Imagine that you are walking alone, after dark, along a road
Set distance: the task is repeated at one or more locations pre-determined by the experimenter. bIt is reported that there was no significant difference between the MH and HPS, but the article does not provide any numeric results for this test nor the method of statistical analysis. cIn these studies, there was a reported trend for spectral power distribution (SPD) to affect recognition distance but this is not supported by a statistical analysis of differences
Bommel[3] investigated the influence of glare using a stop-distance recognition procedure, and found that with glare – 85Threshold Increment515 – recognition required a slightly shorter distance than without glare – Threshold Increment52 – for the same light level. The results suggest this effect diminishes at higher light levels; the use of familiar targets may have made the task too easy and hiding a greater effect of glare; in any case, the apparent difference was not confirmed by statistical analysis
Summary
Imagine that you are walking alone, after dark, along a road. Ahead you can see another person or group of people: what visual cues inform your decision of whether or not to continue walking in the same direction or to take action to avoid approaching any closer?. People are in constant interaction with their surroundings In this interaction or transaction, people’s experience of the environment shapes their behaviour, and their behaviour in turn will affect the environment.[9] The HEI model[10] offers a framework to systematically analyse these relationships between people and the physical and social dimensions of the environment, and has previously been used to study mobility in urban areas.[11,12,13,14] The HEI model is based on the theory that emotional processes are affected by different levels of appraisal of stimuli in the external natural and social environment.[10,15] different outcomes of the emotional process, in terms of approach or avoidance response, are expected depending on the outcome of the interplay between the physical and social environment, the activity at hand, and the individual’s characteristics, values, attitudes and prior experiences. It becomes important to choose the most relevant stimuli (visual cues), find a suitable operationalisation and use appropriate methods and measurements of sufficient ecological validity
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