The Look of Safety?

How police appearance affects the feeling of safety and fear of crime remains an underexplored question. Only a handful of studies examine this relationship in depth (Dau et al., 2023, p. 210), and even fewer focus primarily on the role of police uniform style (Ariel et al., 2016), yielding rather inconclusive results. These studies rely almost exclusively on field experiments and randomized controlled trials. Although field experiments offer high external validity, their internal validity tends to be lower due to challenges in controlling for confounding variables and ensuring consistent experimental conditions. Laboratory and survey experiments provide a valuable complement to field studies; however, such approaches remain rare (van de Veer et al., 2012, p. 3116). This study presents the results of a vignette survey experiment conducted in April 2025 with approximately 1,000 participants from the German state of Saxony. Using photo vignettes depicting two police officers in different scenarios, respondents will assess their feeling of safety for each presented image (see Eifler & Petzold, 2022). The vignettes manipulate four situational dimensions: police uniform type (standard uniform with and without a protective vest, police coverall with a protective vest), gender composition of the police patrol (all-female, all-male, mixed-gender), lighting conditions (day, night), and physical incivilities and signs of decay in the environment (low, high), resulting in 36 unique vignette combinations. Each respondent evaluates four vignettes. The findings of this study will provide insights into how police appearance and situational context—individually and in combination—affect the feeling of safety. These results may contribute to evidence-based policing strategies aimed at enhancing public perceptions of security.