Perceived Safety and Pedestrian Performance in Pedestrian Priority Streets (PPSs) in Seoul, Korea: A Virtual Reality Experiment and Trace Mapping

Abstract

Pedestrian Priority Street (PPS) project, launched to encourage safer and more convenient walking by improving the inferior pedestrian environment on narrow streets without sidewalks, is based on Monderman’s shared space concept. Similar to the shared space approach, PPS aims for mutual consideration between pedestrians and drivers and strives to create a pedestrian-friendly environment, but the project relies on a unique road surface design. Considering the two main goals of the PPS project, this study investigated how subjective safety and pedestrians’ movements differed by design types. To analyze safety perception, ordered Logit regression and post-hoc interviews were conducted with visual assessment survey using recorded VR (virtual reality) videos. Next, trace mapping and analysis were performed based on the video recordings to measure the degree of free walking. The results found that pedestrians perceived higher safety level in PPSs than in general back road. Further, the pedestrians moved more freely in the street with an integrated design. In other types, which suggested a pedestrian zone at the roadside, there was not much difference in behavior from the general back roads. Thus, the design principle of PPS, which does not set a boundary between pedestrian and vehicle area, should be observed to lead to behavioral changes in pedestrians.

Virtual reality assessment of walking in a modifiable urban environment: a feasibility and acceptability study

“…Participants were allowed to stand still or walk around the room while the simulation moved around them, irrespective of their own movements. Additionally, VR has been used to measure perceived safety of various environments through self-report [82][83][84] and physiological responses 83 using motionless VR environments. While impressions formed in VR environments are more similar to those formed in their corresponding real-world environment than are impressions formed using photographs 84 , these studies still do not investigate walking behavior as participants do not meaningfully walk to navigate the VR environments.…”

“…The purpose of this methodology is to immerse participants into a city-scale modifiable virtual environment and allow free movement in the environment via overground walking. While VR technology has been used in walking research 72,75,76,[79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92] , we propose a novel use affording participants the ability to physically walk around a large urban environment without the use of a laborious omnidirectional treadmill. Our study set-up allows researchers to address novel questions such as how environmental modifications affect decisions regarding whether to walk and for what duration.…”

Human-centric computational urban design: optimizing high-density urban areas to enhance human subjective well-being

“…To measure human behavior, experiences, and perception in the built environment through surveys, various methods can be employed, such as virtual environments (Evers et al, 2023;Birenboim et al, 2021;Echevarria Sanchez et al, 2017;Johnson et al, 2010;Lee and Kim, 2021;Leite et al, 2019;Lu et al, 2021), real images and videos (Alhasoun and Gonzalez, 2019;Chen et al, 2022;Ye et al, 2019), and the tracking of real behavior (Al Mushayt et al, 2021;Batool et al, 2021;Liu et al, 2021).…”

Exploring the Role of Transit Ridership as a Proxy for Regional Centrality in Moderating the Relationship between the 3Ds and Street-Level Pedestrian Volume: Evidence from Seoul, Korea

“…Based on these variables, several studies empirically investigated the effect of 3D to 5D variables after controlling for other factors [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. Studies have also examined the role of microscopic streetscape elements such as architectural details and aesthetics, street furniture, pavement design, microclimate, and safety [30][31][32][33][34][35].…”