Factors Affecting Perception of Outdoor Public Environments

Abstract

Comfort and related perceptions are important in respect to use of outdoor public places. In a laboratory, 170 persons viewed four such places on slides and rated them on 10 dimensions, namely, “comfortable,” “playful,” “serious,” “active,” “unsafe,” “good,” “tense,” “interesting,” “gloomy,” and “pleasing.” Instructions were used to vary time of day and the number of people present at the location. It was found that women (n = 96) regard outdoor environments as more threatening than do men (n = 74) which suggests that women feel more vulnerable to untoward acts and that public places are rated less desirous at dusk than at dawn, presumably because dusk is followed by night and dawn by day. It was also discovered that such public environments are rated better than deserted places when occupied by two or more persons. Some of these results are consistent with the Prospect-Refuge Theory of Appleton.