Document Open Access Logo

The Same Street, Different Safety Judgments: Evaluative Framing Effects in Daytime and Nighttime Street View Imagery (Short Paper)

Authors Tong Qin , Nico Van de Weghe , Wim Fias , Haosheng Huang

PDF

File

Thumbnail PDF
PDF
LIPIcs.COSIT.2026.32.pdf
  • Filesize: 1.66 MB
  • 7 pages

Document Identifiers

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Information systems → Geographic information systems
  • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in HCI
  • Human-centered computing → User studies
Keywords
  • street view imagery
  • spatial cognition
  • safety perception
  • evaluative framing
  • geographic information science

Metrics

Abstract

Street View Imagery (SVI) is widely used to study perceived street safety, yet most studies treat safety as a general impression of urban scenes and rely mainly on daytime imagery. It remains unclear whether safety judgments differ across evaluative framings, defined here as the safety question asked of participants, and whether this difference varies between daytime and nighttime scenes. We analyzed 7,320 safety ratings from 61 participants for 120 SVIs, including 60 daytime and 60 nighttime images. Participants judged scenes under two evaluative framings: crime-related safety and traffic-related safety. Using cumulative link mixed models with random intercepts for participants and stimuli, we found that the stimulus set received higher safety ratings in the crime-related framing than in the traffic-related framing. This evaluative-framing effect was stronger for daytime than for nighttime scenes. These findings indicate that perceived street safety in SVI is not a fixed property of image content, but also depends on the safety question asked during judgment.

Cite As Get BibTex

Tong Qin, Nico Van de Weghe, Wim Fias, and Haosheng Huang. The Same Street, Different Safety Judgments: Evaluative Framing Effects in Daytime and Nighttime Street View Imagery (Short Paper). In 17th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 393, pp. 32:1-32:7, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2026.32

Author Details

Tong Qin
  • Department of Geography, Ghent University, Belgium
Nico Van de Weghe
  • Department of Geography, Ghent University, Belgium
Wim Fias
  • Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium
Haosheng Huang
  • Department of Geography, Ghent University, Belgium

Acknowledgements

We want to thank the study participants for their time.

References

  1. Nandita Basu, Oscar Oviedo-Trespalacios, Mark King, Md. Kamruzzaman, and Md. Mazharul Haque. The influence of the built environment on pedestrians' perceptions of attractiveness, safety and security. Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, 87:203-218, 2022. URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trf.2022.03.006.
  2. Filip Biljecki and Koichi Ito. Street view imagery in urban analytics and GIS: A review. Landscape and Urban Planning, 215:104217, 2021. URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2021.104217.
  3. Zhuangyuan Fan, Fan Zhang, Becky P. Y. Loo, and Carlo Ratti. Urban visual intelligence: Uncovering hidden city profiles with street view images. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 120(27):e2220417120, 2023. URL: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2220417120.
  4. Yuhao Kang, Jonatan Abraham, Vania Ceccato, Fábio Duarte, Song Gao, Lukas Ljungqvist, Fan Zhang, Per Näsman, and Carlo Ratti. Assessing differences in safety perceptions using GeoAI and survey across neighbourhoods in stockholm, sweden. Landscape and Urban Planning, 236:104768, 2023. URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2023.104768.
  5. Eduardo E. Lozano. Visual needs in the urban environment. Town Planning Review, 45(4):351-374, 1974. URL: https://doi.org/10.3828/tpr.45.4.h43m7270u0m3x968.
  6. Jack L. Nasar. Perception, cognition, and evaluation of urban places. In Irwin Altman and Ervin H. Zube, editors, Public Places and Spaces, pages 31-56. Springer, Boston, MA, 1989. URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-5601-1_3.
  7. Yoshiki Ogawa, Takuya Oki, Chenbo Zhao, Yoshihide Sekimoto, and Chihiro Shimizu. Evaluating the subjective perceptions of streetscapes using street-view images. Landscape and Urban Planning, 247:105073, 2024. URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2024.105073.
  8. Callista A. Ottoni, Joanie Sims-Gould, and Meghan Winters. Safety perceptions of older adults on an urban greenway: Interplay of the social and built environment. Health & Place, 70:102605, 2021. URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2021.102605.
  9. Luca Pappalardo, Ed Manley, Vedran Sekara, and Laura Alessandretti. Future directions in human mobility science. Nature Computational Science, 3(7):588-600, 2023. URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43588-023-00469-4.
  10. Yunmi Park and Max Garcia. Pedestrian safety perception and urban street settings. International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, 14(11):860-871, 2020. URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/15568318.2019.1641577.
  11. Tong Qin, Nico Van de Weghe, and Haosheng Huang. The role of urban built environments in the perception of safety: A systematic review. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 114:107915, 2025. URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2025.107915.
  12. Johan Rahm, Catharina Sternudd, and Maria Johansson. "in the evening, i don't walk in the park": The interplay between street lighting and greenery in perceived safety. Urban Design International, 26(1):42-52, 2021. URL: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41289-020-00134-6.
  13. Philip Salesses, Katja Schechtner, and César A. Hidalgo. The collaborative image of the city: Mapping the inequality of urban perception. PLOS ONE, 8(7):e68400, 2013. URL: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0068400.
  14. I. Senna, F. Iglesias, and L. H. Matsunaga. Measuring the effects of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (cpted) on fear of crime in public spaces. Crime Prevention and Community Safety, 27(1):1-17, 2025. URL: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41300-025-00223-0.
  15. Petrus te Braak and Theun Pieter van Tienoven. Navigating the city: A systematic literature review on women’s perceived safety in urban public space. Cities, 162:105907, 2025. URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2025.105907.
  16. Fan Zhang, Bolei Zhou, Liu Liu, Yu Liu, Helene H. Fung, Hui Lin, and Carlo Ratti. Measuring human perceptions of a large-scale urban region using machine learning. Landscape and Urban Planning, 180:148-160, 2018. URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2018.08.020.
Any Issues?
X

Feedback on the Current Page

CAPTCHA

Thanks for your feedback!

Feedback submitted to Dagstuhl Publishing

Could not send message

Please try again later or send an E-mail
© 2023-2026 Schloss Dagstuhl – LZI GmbH Schloss Dagstuhl – LZI GmbH About DROPS Imprint Privacy Contact