Street lighting and environmental safety evaluation across different countries: A cross-national comparisons between the Netherlands and Argentina.

ANTAL HAANS; GRACIELA TONELLO; NATALIA VALLADARES

Québec

Congreso; IAPS 2020 RUNNING OUT OF TIME - Setting the pace for future generations; 2020

IAps: INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION PEOPLE-ENVIRONMENT STUDIES.

Instruments used for the evaluation of urban environments and street lighting are often used across different countries and cultures. However, there is little research on how national differences affect the performance and psychometric properties of these instruments. To investigate this, 48 participants from the Netherlands and 50 from Argentina (57 women and 41 men; Mage = 31; Range 18 to 68) evaluated 100 photos of nocturnal urban streets; 50 of which from the Netherlands and 50 from Argentina. Each photo was rated on 3 items of the Perceived Environmental Safety (PES) instrument and on 6 items of the Perceived Outdoor Lighting Quality (POLQ) instrument (3 items measuring lighting intensity, and 3 items measuring lighting comfort). We found high interrater consistency across both samples of raters and across both samples of streets, with ICC(C,k) ≥ . 95, except for the naturalness item of the POLQ, with ICC(C,k) values between .50 and .80. Both groups of raters showed substantial inconsistency when judging the naturalness of the lighting. Factor analyses confirmed the expected factor structure of the PES and POLQ for both rater groups, except for the comfort glare item not loading on the comfort but the lighting intensity dimension?the latter likely resulting from the use of photos. Factors scores obtained for Dutch raters correlated highly with those obtained with Argentinian raters, with r ≥ .94 and p < .001; demonstrating again the consistency between both country groups. Finally, a series of multilevel analyses demonstrated small but statistically significant (p < .01) differences in lighting intensity and comfort ratings between Dutch and Argentinian raters, and small but significant country of rater by country of street interactions. Limitations and implications of these findings will be discussed.