Maria’s interest in light is from the angle of environmental psychology – the study of transactions between individuals and their physical settings. A setting affects our feelings and therefore our interactions with a place, and these feelings can be affected whether we are in a place during the day or at night.
Maria’s study, which also includes an element on energy saving in outdoors environments, is monitoring people in real life settings and looking at the impact of light exposure on decisions such as whether they go out at all, which route they might take to their destination and how they might travel there.
Within these decisions are questions of safety, vulnerability, social interactions (are these diminished at night?), nature experience and psychological restoration as well as the needs of different interest groups.