@article{jedon2025darkness,
title={Is it the darkness that you fear? The impact of anxiety on pedestrian tolerance for darkness},
author={Jedon, Richard and Haans, Antal and van den Akkerveken, Ilana and de Kort, Yvonne},
ISSN={0272-4944},
url={https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494425002038},
urldate={2025-08-08},
DOI={10.1016/j.jenvp.2025.102720},
journal={Journal of Environmental Psychology},
volume={106},
publisher={Elsevier {BV}},
year={2025},
month={09},
pages={102720},
abstract={Being and feeling safe is fundamental to pedestrians. Previous research on pedestrian sense of safety suggests not only environmental factors, such as prospect or concealment, but also interpersonal factors, such as arousal and anxiety, to have a role. Arousal and anxiety serve to promote survival via increasing alertness and attention to threatening or ambiguous stimuli. Where a previous study demonstrated the causal path from arousal to environmental safety appraisal, the present study investigated if increased tense arousal and anxiety lead to lower tolerance for darkness (TfD). We manipulated anxiety in participants (N = 27), through affective sounds and threat of mild electric shocks, to test its effect on TfD in unsafe nocturnal urban environments. Trait anxiety was also expected to be a predictor for TfD. Increased anxiety indeed made participants less willing to allow lower levels of streetlighting, thus demonstrating lower TfD. Trait anxiety levels also successfully predicted TfD.},
}