The Nocturnity Scale: Measuring the Sense of Being at Night in Virtual Urban Environments

2026-08-07

AI Summary

This study addresses the lack of effective instruments for quantifying the subjective sense of “nighttime atmosphere” evoked by scenes in virtual urban environments. To bridge this gap, it introduces the novel construct of “nocturnity” and develops a theoretical framework encompassing three dimensions: perception, activity, and internal state. Building upon a comprehensive literature review, expert evaluation, and psychometric methodology, the authors construct an initial 42-item Likert-scale questionnaire. Integrating domain-specific knowledge from urban lighting research, the instrument incorporates diagnostically meaningful subdimensions, thereby constituting the first multidimensional measurement tool tailored specifically to virtual nighttime settings. This foundational work enables future empirical validation and cross-scenario comparative analyses.

Abstract

Nighttime environments are increasingly used in virtual urban studies, yet darkness alone does not fully recreate the subjective sense of being at night. Prior work suggests that this experience depends not only on the absence of daylight, but also on lighting structure, low-light perception, human activity, soundscape, and self-related states. However, no existing tool directly assesses this scene-dependent subjective experience. This work introduces nocturnity as the feeling of being at night elicited by a scene and proposes a theory-driven framework structured into three subscales: perceptual, activity, and inner-state nocturnity. Based on this framework, we develop a first candidate questionnaire for virtual urban environments. Developed through a literature-informed process and reviewed by two urban lighting experts, the scale comprises 42 Likert-type items, including three diagnostic subscales and complementary global and time-related items. This work provides a first operational basis for comparing virtual urban scenes according to their perceived nocturnity and supports future empirical validation.

Problem

• nocturnity
• virtual urban environments
• subjective experience
• nighttime perception
• scene-dependent

Innovation

• nocturnity
• virtual urban environments
• subjective experience
• measurement scale
• nighttime perception