Perceiving safety in passenger ships -User studies in an authentic environment

The importance of including knowledge about human behaviour into the safety design for passenger ships has increasingly been taken into account. The interaction between passengers and the passenger ship is critical for human behaviour in terms of passengers’ perceptions of the environment. The way people perceive the environment and the various features of the environment has been studied quite extensively in design research, but little research has been done on the specific issues that shape people’s perceptions, such as safety. This paper discusses how people perceive safety within the context of passenger ships. Having conducted user studies in authentic environments, this paper identifies five safety perception themes. The results indicate that passengers perceive safety via the architecture of the passenger ship, the life-saving appliances, communication, emotions and other people. The outcomes were compared with the SOLAS regulations. The article contributes to safety research on passenger ship design, where human perceptions and reactions to the surrounding environment significantly affect behaviour and should be studied in parallel with technical progress.