How site environmental characteristics shape safety perception in urban green spaces: A scoping review

This review utilizes a scoping methodology to analyze 62 relevant studies, examining how environmental characteristics shape perceptions of safety in urban green spaces. It distinguishes three core concepts of safety perception and develops a classification system encompassing four categories of environmental characteristics: maintenance and aesthetics, visual obstruction and imagination, escapeability and wayfinding, and spatial vitality and social presence. This framework elucidates the psychological mechanisms through which these characteristics influence perceived safety. The findings indicate that maintenance and aesthetic characteristics primarily operate by risk identification and regulatory impression, while the effects of visual obstruction are mediated by threat-related imagination. Escapeability and wayfinding characteristics facilitate risk-avoidance conditions, and spatial vitality characteristics contribute through interpersonal relationships and expectations of assistance. Environmental characteristics interact in compensatory, weakening, or covarying ways, with their significance moderated by temporal, demographic, and contextual factors. Building on this evidence, the review proposes the risk control-escape possibility-assistance availability theoretical model. The model presents a three-layer architecture linking the physical environment, environmental perception, and safety assessment, operationalizing safety perception across three measurable dimensions. It offers theoretical guidance for optimizing safety in urban green spaces, while future research should focus on empirical validation of the model and its cross-cultural applicability. • Distinguished three safety perception concepts • Classified environmental characteristics into four categories affecting safety perception • Analyzed the moderating role of contextual factors • Reviewed interactions of multiple factors • Proposed the REA theoretical model.