How Crosswalk Affordances Influence Pedestrian Vigilance and Safety Perception

This study examines how pedestrian behavior and risk perception are shaped by crosswalk infrastructure through two distinct pathways: direct environmental affordances and perception-mediated associations. Using immersive virtual reality (VR) simulations of urban crossings, participants completed multiple trials measuring head scanning, yielding, crossing speed, and perceived safety and collision risk. Linear mixed-effects models and path-decomposition analyses were employed to assess whether behavioral differences across crosswalk types were consistent with perception-mediated processes. Results indicate that zebra and interactive crosswalks significantly increased perceived safety and reduced perceived collision risk. However, behavioral adaptations—reduced scanning, lower yielding, and slower speed—were largely independent of these perceptual shifts. The decomposition analysis revealed a suppression pattern: safety perception encouraged scanning, while crosswalk affordances directly reduced vigilance, suggesting that implicit cues outweighed conscious appraisal. These findings imply that pedestrian behavior is primarily guided by automatic affordance-based mechanisms rather than deliberate perception, highlighting a potential false-safety effect in crosswalk design.