Despite an increased understanding of the individual and contextual factors that influence both employee safety behavior and workplace safety incidents (e.g., injuries, accidents), there has been surprisingly little theoretical or empirical consideration of the individual employee's psychological experience of safety at work. Given that feeling safe is widely theorized to be a basic psychological need with implications for individual well-being and safety-related work behavior, the purpose of this dissertation was to use cybernetic theory-a conceptual framework that explains self-regulation through negative feedback processes-to explore both the antecedents and outcomes of individuals' perceived safety at work. Theory-based hypotheses were tested in a field sample of 595 production employees and their foremen at three weapons production sites in the southern United States. Results revealed that psychological safety climate and perceived job risk were both meaningful correlates of workers' perceived safety whereas personality variables (i.e., trait anxiety, safety locus of control) and personal safety knowledge were not meaningful correlates. Consistent with cybernetic theory, lower perceived safety was associated with increased safety-related anxiety. However, contrary to theoretical expectations, safety-related anxiety did not share consistent, positive associations with self- or foreman-rated safety behaviors. There was limited support, however, which suggested that safety-related anxiety is positively associated with self-reported safety participation behaviors. The implications of these findings in conjunction with a number of explorative analyses are discussed and recommendations for future research are provided.

Pedestrian lighting design is a very important part of urban lighting design. Appropriately designed pedestrian lighting can provide people with sense of safety and improve their quality of life. However, the exploration of people's needs and perceptions of pedestrian lighting is neglected. Most of the existing design guidelines are generated from designer centered perspectives. This study aims at creating new perspectives in pedestrian lighting study. In this study, lighting quality is investigated through a behavioral science approach by examining the relationship between the lighting attributes and people's perceived safety. Primary research objectives include identifying important attributes of the lighting environment, examining their influence on people's perceived safety, and exploring the impacts of pedestrian's individual characteristics in this perceptual process. In order to fulfill the research objectives, this thesis comprises an online survey that aims to discover the environmental perceptions of the people from Virginia Tech towards the nighttime pedestrian footpath scenes of the campus. The findings from the online survey indicate that important lighting attributes influencing people's perceived safety are identified as: uniformity, facial recognition, concealment and perceived brightness. The findings further indicate that some environmental context attributes, environmental perception attributes, and socio-demographic attributes also significantly influence people's perceived safety. Several design guidelines are provided for future lighting design practice. / Master of Landscape Architecture

Every year over 1.35 Million lives are lost to road accidents. Trucks are probably the most dangerous vehicles on public roads due to their size and mass. 15% of all accidents involve trucks and the majority of victims are car occupants. Most of these accidents happen outside of urban areas at high speeds. In the dawn of autonomous drive and electromobility the trucking industry has the opportunity to reinvent their products. Volvo Trucks is a company that has Safety in its DNA. Future Volvo trucks could be tailored around Safety to save lives and bring justice to this core value. Autonomy has the potential to make road accidents history in the long run. Before that becomes a reality, society will face a transitioning period where autonomous vehicles will share the space with manually driven vehicles. Communication between human and machine will be more important that ever. Product Designers must account also for situations where an accident is unavoidable. The focus of this project is to explore what safety means for the human eye. How do we perceive safety visually and how do we create trust? Trucks are versatile products built with modularity in mind. Manufacturers are responsible for delivering a capable tractor unit. Trailers and other accessories are built externally. Throughout the process of this project a holistic approach was adopted. The only way to have full control over the product experience is to design a complete product: trailer and tractor unit. Volvo Trucks experts are consulted along the way covering key points of interest such as Passive Safety, User Experience Design and Aerodynamics. Benchmarking of existing concepts sets a starting point. Initial explorations question the architecture of conventional trucks. Different set-ups and layouts are proposed. Each decision is made based on various safety needs of the future semi-autonomous traffic. Analog sketches and digital renderings of design proposals build the way towards a key sketch. The chosen design direction is further developed and built in CAD. The vehicle is designed with an eye on its environment. The link between truck and car, truck and human is the core of this project. This vehicle sheds light on the mystery of how autonomous vehicles will blend with traffic as it is known today. Focusing on long haul highway routs Volvo VISE is designed to execute hub to hub transport services autonomously. Signals used to communicate in road traffic are translated to the digital age. By being able to understand its environment and react to it, Volvo VISE comes to life with a soul of its own. Through various sensors and autonomous technology the vehicle measures each traffic situation and earns the trust of its surroundings through clear communication of intent. With soft and generous shapes the exterior design describes a friendly vehicle that wins over its audience at the first glance. Volvo VISE has a deeper understanding of safety. Beneath the skin and besides its capability to communicate, the vehicle is equipped with several passive safety features, taking control in every situation. Volvo VISE ensures road safety for all.

The aim of the thesis is to obtain a better understanding of the importance of parks for urban quality, particularly for safety. This is achieved in two ways; first, by assessing parks’ impact on the perceived quality of the urban environment (whether it is incorporated into housing prices or not) in Stockholm. Second, the study investigates whether safety in parks may be assessed using principles of Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) using a high-crime park in Stockholm’s inner city. The thesis starts with an introduction to the theme, with a brief discussion of background theory, literature review, the study area and the methods. Then, it reports the results of the articles included in the thesis and discusses their main contributions to the field of research. A mixed methods approach utilizes both quantitative and qualitative data analysis. Regression models and a Geographic Information System (GIS) were used in Paper I, which aims to clarify how park proximity affects housing prices and, when considering residential properties and park type, how crime rates in parks affect housing prices. Findings show that the further away an apartment is located from a park, the higher the discount on its price effect, but this effect (dependent on the park type), as an accumulated measure of parks, lowers prices or is negligible. Paper II assesses the use and adequacy of CPTED principles to guide the assessment of safety conditions of an urban park. The historical development of CPTED is presented followed by an analysis of a case study, Tantolunden, in Stockholm. Site observations, crime mapping, people count and interviews were conducted. Results show many entrances in this particular park defy the principles of access control and in turn impose limitations on park maintenance. Findings also show that interrupted sight lines create limited surveillance. The paper concludes by identifying the potentialities and challenges of CPTED principles when applied to safety in parks. Findings presented in this thesis are relevant for many stakeholders in society as results show the variation in crime and safety in urban parks, and the way they can be assessed and tackled. / <p>QC 20151023</p> / Safety for whom? Housing market, safety and distributive justice

An important aspect of city life is people’s experience. Perceived safety is one important aspect of that experience. In a large perspective, perceived safety concerns discussions on just public space. In a small perspective, it has direct implications for people’s mobility and ultimately their quality of life. Current literature emphasises the importance of main street as an urban public space. Given that perceived safety matters to urban life in large, and people’s everyday experience in particular, and that the main street has great potential as a public space, it is important to understand perceived safety on main street. The aim of this study is to contribute to knowledge on what is important for street users’ perceived safety on main streets, and how the frontage on main streets can contribute to perceived safety. Through a questionnaire, interviews and place observations carried out on Odengatan, Stockholm, this study finds that among nine perceived safety aspects, “mix of people”, followed by (informal) “social control” and “urban form”, were the aspects that would make the highest number of street users on Odengatan feel safe. It also finds that active frontage was directly connected to the street users’ experience on Odengatan; the three aspects were connected to several factors of active frontage. In addition, it finds that those active frontage factors are able to contribute positively to perceived safety in the case of Odengatan.

This thesis investigates the relationship between light, visibility and women’s perceived safety through a case study. Specifically, it investigates visibility related to light levels and light distribution at four bus stops in urban areas of Stockholm, Sweden. The methodology is divided into Literature review and Case study. The first provides an overview on theories related to visibility, light and perceived safety in the urban environment.  Then, the Case study presents an investigation through Qualitative and Quantitative research. The Qualitative research is divided into three steps: (1) firstly, four bus stops are selected in urban areas through the Light Zones concept tool [12] and analyzed by the author through the V/P Theory [11]; (2) then, the relationship between light, visibility and women’s safety perception is evaluated through an online form; (3) and finally, this relationship is further investigated during on-site interviews in order to explore how light distribution affect women’s perception. During the Quantitative research, Luminance and Illuminance measurements are developed in order to assess light levels and light distribution at the area of the four bus stops. From the results of all methodology steps, the relationship between light, visibility and women’s perceived safety was discussed and three main factors were assessed to be important to women’s perceived safety at bus stop areas. The first factor is connected to light distribution, and this thesis understood that women’s perceived safety is connected to light on their immediate surroundings, rather than on further distances. The second factor is connected to light levels, and it was concluded that higher light levels on immediate surroundings increase visibility thus, increasing safety perception. The third factor is connected to the experienced light, in which this thesis recognized that previous experiences and contexts related to light influence how women perceive safety in urban spaces.

Do estate and neighborhood characteristics influence perceptions of safety? Using data from a survey of residents living in municipal housing in Gothenburg, this paper argues that the spatial and social characteristics of a neighborhood vastly outpace the role of its socioeconomic and demographic composition, when it comes to accounting for the perceived safety of its residents. The dataset consists of survey data on residents’ perception of safety from 2013-2014 and 2016-2021 in Gothenburg linked with sociodemographic data at an estate level. This allows us to examine the effects of neighborhood and estate characteristics on perceived safety. We compare two different indices of safety and conceptualize safety as residential safety, which is then analyzed using statistical models. The study employs a combined estate and year fixed effect model with estate clustering and robust standard errors to strengthen the causal identification between the relationships and the robustness of the results. The study finds strong support for neighborhoods’ social and spatial characteristics such as contact with neighbors and the level of streetlights to influence individuals’ perception of safety. Weaker support is also established for the safety level to be affected by the socioeconomic composition in the area and the estate. These findings indicate that the social cohesion in a neighborhood and the spatial organization are important factors in increasing residential safety.

In many countries, cycling is mostly known as a sport or leisure activity but unsafe in traffic. Cycling in traffic is one ofthe major safety concem and a main barrier for cycling in many countries (e.g. see in [1; 2]). At the same time, the quality of cycling infrastructure varies strongly between countries. When moving from a country with a non-existing cycling infrastructure to a country with cycling infrastructure, the bicycle as a means of traffic is very likely to raise interest. In the process of settling and influenced by a new environment, migrants usually start changing habituated behaviour and readjust norms and attitudes, what often cause the wish to participate in activities perceived as common behaviour [3]. Nevertheless, in Germany as a rather cycling-friendly country, statistics show significantly less cycling and bicycle ownership among migrants from non-western countries, especially among women compared to natives [ 4]. Aim of the study was to analyse the perceived safety of cycling ftom the view-point of migrants from noncycling countries and subsequently identify the safety-related barriers to cycling. [from Introduction]

Although hotels have already started to implement online check-ins and digital keys in their applications, there has not been much research on the design of these prominent features. This thesis focuses on designing a digital key that is both easy to use and perceived as safe. A Research through Design approach was followed consisting of semi-structured interviews, an analysis of textual user reviews, and Lo-Fi and Hi-Fi prototyping in order to understand the needs and problems users face while receiving and using a digital key, as well as to provide further design directions for this feature. The findings showed that using a mobile phone to open a door or gate was already part of some of the participants’daily life. Still, many people do not like to rush into this digitalization. Hotel guests do not seem very worried about safety and using a digital key because the level of trust is high in the hospitality industry. The design presented in this paper serves as a starting point on how to design the receiving and using of a digital key. / Även om hotell redan har börjat implementera online check-in och digitala nycklar i sina applikationer, finns det idag inte mycket forskning kring design och utformning av dessa framträdande funktioner. Denna avhandling fokuserar på att designa en digital nyckel som både är enkel och smidig att använda, samtidigt som den av användaren skall uppfattas som säker. Ett forskning genom design tillvägagångssätt har använts, som består av semistrukturerade intervjuer, en analys av skriftliga användarrecensioner, samt Lo-Fi och Hi-Fi prototyper. Detta för att skapa förståelse kring de behov och problem som användarna upplever vid mottagande och användning av en digital nyckel, samt för att ge ytterligare vägledning kring design av denna funktion. Resultaten visade att användandet av en mobiltelefon för att öppna en dörr eller port redan var en del av vissa av deltagarnas dagliga liv. Samtidigt är det många som inte vill göra denna digitala transformation allt för snabbt. Hotellgäster verkar inte vara oroliga för säkerheten eller att använda en digital nyckel då man upplever ett starkt förtroende inom hotellindustrin. Den design som presenteras i denna avhandling utgör en startpunkt för hur mandesignar mottagandet och användandet av en digital nyckel.

Objectives Although the lack of perceived safety is an important deterrent to cycling, available knowledge is not comprehensive enough. The aim of this research is to contribute to academic knowledge by exploring the role of road section attributes in perceived safety of cyclists and to develop a method to use the theoretical results in practice. Methods A stated choice survey is carried out to estimate the effects of selected infrastructure attributes on perceived safety. A multinomial logit (MNL) model is used to estimate the effects. Results are used to develop an infrastructure assessment tool by counting aggregate perceived safety utility values of road sections. Results Cyclists perceive the presence of dedicated cycling facilities and physical separation similarly important, while other attributes (traffic volume, speed reduction and adjacent car parking) turned out to be less important. The Subjective Safety Score can be consciously used to evaluate existing and planned road sections and compare different design alternatives. Conclusions The results give a strong support for using physically separated cycling facilities (cycle tracks for example) to engage people to cycling. Further research is recommended to explore the effects of intersection attributes and to include interaction effects of attributes as well.