Conclusion and recommendations

This report has mapped the current landscape of personal safety apps for use in public spaces in the UK and has identified salient themes and gaps in the current academic literature. Personal safety apps make women feel more confident when using public transport and apps can provide a platform for reporting sexual harassment, helping to address the chronic underreporting of this issue on public transport. Similarly, apps help validate women’s experiences of sexual harassment and reduce the stigma that comes from reporting sexual crimes. Personal safety apps have a role in enhancing the safety of women and girls on public transport, however they cannot work alone. Apps need to work in conjunction with other interventions to tackle VAWG including policing, awareness raising, campaigns etc. Indeed, the use of apps is a small part of a larger puzzle to address wider systemic misogyny.

There are clear gaps in the research around how particular groups with protective characteristics use personal safety apps, particularly LGBTQ+ groups, those with a disability and black and ethnic minority groups. More intersectional research is needed to understand how protected characteristics influence the use of apps. There is a clear lack of well-designed and well-thought evaluation of the before and after effects of using personal safety apps, and more evaluations of this type are needed e.g. with a baseline and follow up. Similarly, there appears to be a discrepancy between the desire for women to have apps that are ‘credible’ and the functionality flaws which impact on women’s ability to use such apps in an emergency. There are ethical and legal considerations of using personal safety apps, which have potentially harmful implications for women and girls, so more research is needed to understand how these considerations play out in practice.

More qualitative research is also needed to look at how women experience using personal safety apps (Doria et al., 2021). There is scant literature looking at the use of apps in public spaces more generally and even less looking at the use of apps on public transport. Apps that rely on Wi-Fi connections may be hindered if they are used on public transport and more research is needed to understand how apps are used in practice on different modes of transport.

Recommendations

In light of Transport Scotland’s (2023) women's safety report which recommends improved reporting systems on public transport (Transport Scotland, 2023: 45), and based on the main themes from the literature identified in this follow-up report, four recommendations have been made, two short term and two long term. The recommendations are intended for transport providers to improve the safety of women and girls on public transport in Scotland. It is important to note that research in this area is relatively small and underdeveloped, so the recommendations should be seen as a starting point.

This report has shown that there is a lack of awareness of the existence of personal safety apps, as well as a general willingness to use them.

The literature review has shown that there is a lack of systematised evaluations of personal safety apps. While evaluating apps is not an easy endeavour and the multitude of apps available make this problem more pronounced, it is important that more work is done to evaluate the before and after effects of using apps, particularly relating to reporting.

The literature has shown there is a lack of joined up thinking when it comes to women’s safety across different modes of transport. While current developments with personal safety apps on public transport are promising, they often work in a siloed manner and there is no national approach to tackling VAWG on public transport. A joined-up approach to women’s safety on public transport between transport providers and local authorities would allow for more uniform responses to reporting sexual harassment, better planning, the sharing of best practice and the sharing of gendered segregated data across Scotland ensuring ‘door-to-door’ safety for women and girls.

This report has shown that the landscape of personal safety apps in the UK is wide-ranging, complex, and ever-changing. It is not a straightforward endeavour to make sense of the multitude of apps available for different users and purposes. A centralised platform would ensure that apps are credible, quality assessed, trauma-informed and that data is processed and stored in a secure manner. A centralised platform would benefit users to be able to make informed choices and it would allow support organisations to be able to signpost users more effectively. It would also allow more transparency from app developers around data processing, privacy issues and clarity around pricing.