Testing the Effect of Hedge Height on Perceived Safety—A Landscape Design Intervention

Katinka H Evensen,Aslak Fyhri,Helena Nordh,Ramzi Hassan

doi:10.3390/su13095063

Abstract

Access to safe, green urban environments is important for quality of life in cities. The objective of this study is to explore the impact of a safety-enhancing landscape design measure on visitors’ experiences in an urban park. Additionally, this paper combines the use of field and virtual reality (VR) experiments, contributing methodological insights into how to evaluate safety measures in green space management and research on perceived safety. In a field experiment (n = 266), we explored whether the height of a hedge along a pathway influenced perceived safety among users. The field study showed that cutting down the hedge improved the perceived prospect of the immediate surrounding areas for female users, which again made them feel safer in the park. We developed a VR experiment for an evening scenario in the same environment (n = 19) to supplement the field study and test the effect of the intervention further. The VR experiment also found a gender effect on perceived safety, with females reporting lower perceived safety, but no effect was shown for the height of the hedge. The results in this study show that environmental attributes such as perceived prospect and concealment should be considered in the design and management of urban green spaces. Additionally, this research demonstrates an approach to conducting field experiments to test the effects of actual design interventions and then further developing these experiments using VR technology. Further research on perceived safety in outdoor spaces is needed to make use of this combined method’s potential.

Highlights

Access to safe green urban environments is important for quality of life among urban dwellers [1,2,3]
The objective of the current study was to explore the impact of a safety-enhancing landscape design measure on park visitors’ experiences in an urban park in Oslo. Using both a field experiment and virtual reality (VR) experiment with an evening scenario in the same environment, we explored whether the height of a hedge along a pathway influenced perceived safety among users
We looked at the goodness-of-fit index (GFI) and the adjusted root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), as well as the chi square/degree of freedom ratio, which is known as the relative chi square [38]

Summary

Introduction

Access to safe green urban environments is important for quality of life among urban dwellers [1,2,3]. Fear of crime in urban parks may prevent people from using urban green spaces [9,10], and several studies have shown that women’s experiences of safety and actual use of urban green spaces differs from men’s [11,12,13]. This accentuates the issue of equal access to green spaces, which is related to the United Nations 11th Sustainable Development Goal to create inclusive and safe cities [14].

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion