Service design for public transportation to address the issue of females’ fear of crime

Abstract

In conjunction with their gender, how does the current design of public transport services affect female passengers’ feelings of safety and fear when using the service? This study explores the influential service design attributes of the London Underground on fear of crime in female users through abductive reasoning, in which a hypothesis is provisionally selected by constantly moving back and forth between data and existing theories to find the best possible explanation of the researched phenomenon. Consequently, it proposes a conceptual model for understanding female passengers’ fear of crime in connection with public transport services and suggests influential factors of public transport service design when considering the social problem. It, therefore, draws a more befitting frame of reference for design and improvement of public transport services to ameliorate fear of crime than those based simply on crime prevention.