Navigating unsafety in vulnerable retailscapes: a narrative approach Open Access

This paper addresses how retail stakeholders navigate experiences of unsafety within and around stores in hazardous environments. Safety is a fundamental component of the retail experience, affecting consumers and employees, who co-create the overall store atmosphere (Joy et al., 2023; Ruth et al., 2022). As marketing strategies increasingly prioritize experiential branding and immersive store environments, unsafe conditions directly jeopardize store image and customer engagement (Hughes et al., 2019; Burns et al., 2010).

The retail literature has long emphasized the importance of customer-employee interactions in shaping the store atmosphere and overall brand image (Joy et al., 2023; Becker and Jaakkola, 2020; De Keyser et al., 2020; Bitner, 1992). Retail and service scholars agree that the customer experience cannot be reduced to individual store factors, but rather, it is co-constituted through multiple touchpoints and contextual cues (Gahler et al., 2023; Becker and Jaakkola, 2020; Becker, 2018). Store atmospheres are co-constructed across human, physical, and digital interfaces, from staff behavior and store layout to lighting, signage, and conflict-handling moments, rather than produced by any single store measure (de Keyser et al., 2020). Therefore, retail unsafety is shaped not only by the retailer's actions, but also by variables beyond the retailer's control, such as customers' previous experiences, neighborhood dynamics, and community expectations. Furthermore, retail unsafety unfolds over time because customer experience is processual and evolving rather than static, highlighting the need to understand lived experiences, real-time events, and the unfolding nature of (un)safety in retail environments (see, for example, Becker, 2018).

However, the extant research on retail safety has predominantly focused on retail theft and shrinkage (Korgaonkar et al., 2021; Potdar et al., 2018, 2020), leaving limited insight into the multi-stakeholder interpretation processes that underpin everyday safety practices. In particular, scarce scholarly attention has been paid to how the interplay between stakeholders, such as frontline employees, retail managers, real estate developers, and municipal security officers, shapes the negotiations of the practices, routines, and atmospheres that influence customers' experiences of safety. Understanding this interplay is essential because diverse stakeholders jointly influence how safety is enacted, communicated, and experienced in stores. Despite extensive research on how customers and employees co-produce store atmospherics, scarce research considers how retail stakeholders navigate unsafety in their everyday work environments. Existing studies predominantly focus on consumer satisfaction, service quality, and other customer-centered outcomes, often overlooking the emotional, psychological, and physical demands that unsafe conditions impose on retail stakeholders. Although retailscapes have been widely theorized, its darker dimensions, including workplace violence, intimidation, and employee vulnerability, remain under-explored (Fuentes et al., 2017; Guimarães, 2023; Siguaw et al., 2019). Furthermore, prior research tends to focus on atmospherics within the store, rarely considering broader environmental, organizational, and social conditions that influence retail stakeholders' experiences of safety.

This study explores how retail stakeholders navigate experiences of unsafety in retailscapes characterised by high crime rates and persistent insecurity. Ensuring a safe working environment is paramount in these contexts, as they are often shaped by social tensions, economic instability, and physical threats. To this end, the present work uses a narrative approach to examine how experiences of unsafety are understood and navigated in everyday retail work and how they affect retailers operating in vulnerable environments. Specifically, the study addresses the following research questions: (1) How do retail stakeholders construct narratives of unsafety in and around the store? and (2) How do these narratives shape everyday practices for navigating safety?

These questions are explored through an empirical study situated in vulnerable retailscapes where unsafety is an ongoing operational challenge. Positioning the store within its social and neighborhood context highlights that retail safety cannot be understood solely through in-store attributes. Instead, experiences of unsafety are negotiated through narratives that situate the store within wider social conditions. Such narratives guide how stakeholders understand threats, interpret incidents, and practice safety in everyday work.

The paper proceeds as follows. It first reviews the extant research on retail safety and consumer experiences, and then explains the narrative approach guiding our analysis. Thereafter, the empirical analysis and findings are presented. The analysis examines how experiences of unsafety are navigated through narrative plots among retail stakeholders operating in Swedish vulnerable retailscapes. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of its theoretical contributions and practical implications for store safety management.

Retail has been identified as one of the sectors most exposed to workplace violence (Martaindale et al., 2017). This exposure is closely tied to the spatial and organisational logic of the contemporary neoliberal servicescape (Bitner, 1992), which is characterised by open and easily accessible store layouts, long operating hours, and increasingly precarious staffing arrangements. These conditions create environments in which employees and other retail stakeholders are more susceptible to threats, confrontations, and unsafe encounters with customers during the course of everyday work. Bitner et al. (1994) drew attention to the “dark side” of servicescapes, highlighting problematic customer behaviours such as verbal aggression, physical abuse, and lawbreaking. However, the dominant customer-centric ethos, often encapsulated in the mantra “the customer is always right”, tends to conceal the emotional and psychological strain that such encounters place on employees (see Fyrberg Yngfalk and Fellesson, 2025). Incidents involving incivil or aggressive customer behaviour, put considerable pressure on frontline workers and can contribute to heightened anxiety, burnout, and diminished well-being (Gaucher and Chebat, 2019; Harris and Daunt, 2013). Previous research has predominantly examined store safety through the servicescape framework (Siguaw et al., 2019; Bustamante and Rubio, 2017; Bitner, 1992). Based on behavioral psychology, this framework posits that environmental stimuli in service settings elicit specific cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses from staff and consumers (Williams and Dargel, 2004). Accordingly, physical cues in the servicescape are assumed to be manipulable in order to enhance perceptions of store atmosphere (Joy et al., 2023; Bitner et al., 1994). In retail settings, strategies to enhance safety often draw on the principles of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED). CPTED emphasizes spatial design, surveillance, and environmental management as key means of reducing crime and improving perceptions of safety (Ceccato and Armitage, 2018; Kajalo and Lindblom, 2016; Cozens and Love, 2015). In retail settings, this approach aims to deter shoplifting and violent incidents. However, behavioral psychology frameworks and CPTED approaches tend to overlook experiential dimensions of safety, assuming it can be fully engineered through environmental design (Piroozfar et al., 2019). This assumption is problematic because measures such as surveillance systems and security personnel may increase some people's feelings of safety yet paradoxically heighten others' perceptions of unsafety within retail environments (Koistinen and Järvinen, 2016).

The service marketing literature offers a more comprehensive view of the consumer experience as a multifaceted, dynamic, and context-dependent process (Gahler et al., 2023; de Keyser et al., 2020; Becker, 2018), which is useful for understanding experiences of unsafety. According to this view, consumer experience emerges through interactions with “experience partners,” including employees, other customers, and brands, at touchpoints throughout the customer journey (Gahler et al., 2023; Becker, 2018). Consumer experience is understood as emerging within broader ecosystems comprising multiple actors, social norms, and institutional arrangements (Becker, 2018). Therefore, experiences in retail settings are shaped not only by organizational practices, but also by the behavior of other customers, neighborhood dynamics, and broader institutional conditions, such as regulations and community expectations. Rather than being embedded solely in the physical attributes of the store, experiences arise through interactions among actors and situations across the consumer journey.

Building on a relational and situational understanding of the consumer experience, this paper conceptualizes retail unsafety as a co-constructed phenomenon involving multiple retail stakeholders. To account for the contextual forces shaping these experiences, the concept of the retailscape is adopted. Retailscapes have been conceptualized as socio-spatial assemblages comprising retail establishments, practices, and relationships (Fuentes et al., 2017; Boamah et al., 2020). From this perspective, stores are embedded within broader networks of social and spatial relations that shape in-store dynamics. Ceccato and Armitage (2018) emphasize the importance of a multi-stakeholder approach to safety that extends beyond individual stores to encompass larger retail environments, such as shopping malls. Similarly, Lowe and Wrigley (2000) argue that contemporary retail geographies unfold across interconnected spatial domains such as the street, mall, store, and home, each of which contributes to evolving consumption practices, retail experiences, and urban identities. Therefore, they call for moving beyond purely quantitative assessments of in-store activity toward more culturally informed analyses that capture the lived experiences and symbolic meanings embedded in retail settings.

This study takes a narrative approach to illuminate the processes through which individual stakeholders navigate their experiences of unsafety. The narrative approach is well-suited for capturing lived experiences and analyzing how meaning is assigned to them through emplotted narratives, in other words, stories (Ruth et al., 2022; Czarniawska, 2004). Stories organise events in ways that give meaning to actions, providing temporal and spatial coherence to experiences that might otherwise seem fragmented. Thus, narrations are constitutive practices that actively influence experiences within their social context rather than merely representing them. In this sense, stories play a central role in constructing experiences of unsafety and in guiding collective responses to challenging situations.

Stories of unsafety are examined among retail stakeholders operating in ten of the 59 high-crime areas identified as vulnerable by the Swedish Police Authority (2023). These areas were chosen as extreme cases (Patton, 2014) to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the intersection of retail and urban unsafety. Vulnerable areas are characterized by entrenched criminal networks that obstruct emergency services (Grander et al., 2022) and face challenges such as drug trafficking, institutional distrust, and socioeconomic hardship (Gerell et al., 2021; Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, 2021).

Many of these areas were originally developed during Sweden's Million Programme (1964–1974), a large-scale initiative aimed at resolving acute housing shortages. Although over one million units were built, the rapid expansion resulted in vacancies that were later occupied by groups facing social and economic marginalization (Grander et al., 2022). These historical and structural conditions shape vulnerable retailscapes and contribute to the complex dynamics of unsafety explored in this paper.

Grocery stores were selcted as the focal retail format due to their prevalence in vulnerable areas and their embeddedness within a complex retail landscape involving actors such as the police, municipalities, housing companies, and property owners. Retailers must navigate this network of stakeholders to ensure store safety and maintain operations. The ten selected areas span seven municipalities: Stockholm and Järfälla (east), Jönköping and Gothenburg (west), and Helsingborg, Kristianstad, and Malmö (south). To protect participants, all locations, names, and informants have been anonymized.

In-depth interviews were conducted between 2021 and 2023 to understand how retail stakeholders navigate experiences of unsafety (see Jackson et al., 2024; Whysall, 2000). Informants were asked to recount critical incidents of unsafety and reflect on how these incidents shaped their daily practices. Broad, open-ended questions allowed for the capture of context-specific insights (see  Appendixes 1 and  2). A total of 53 stakeholders participated in the study, including 26 store owners, managers, and employees (I1–I26), 13 local government representatives (I27–I39), and 14 co-workers in public housing and property companies (I40–I53) (refer to Web appendix 1). Participants were recruited using snowball sampling. Interviews were conducted individually or in focus groups on-site, via Zoom, or by phone and lasted between 20 and 90 min. All interviews were recorded, transcribed, and translated from Swedish to English. Due to the potentially sensitive nature of the topic, all personal and locational identifiers were anonymized.

The empirical material was analyzed using a narrative approach informed by the concept of emplotment. This concept involves organising events by means of plots that give meaning to lived experience (Czarniawska, 2004). Rather than directly asking about experiences, which may be difficult for informants to articulate, narrative methods capture how people make sense of events by assembling them into stories. Experiences are often easier to convey through concrete stories about what happened, why it happened, to whom, and with what consequences.

Emplotment makes it possible to examine how experiences of unsafety are constructed and navigated through storytelling (see Lucarelli et al., 2023). Recurring narrative patterns were discerned, allowing for the categorization of typical story plots that point to the various ways unsafety is experienced in vulnerable retailscapes.

The analysis highlights three dominant story plots that organise how stakeholders navigate experiences of unsafety. These plots centre on the threatening consumer, the hostile environment, and the vulnerability of the local community.

The first plot, constructed by frontline retail staff and managers, conveys work in vulnerable urban areas as demanding and chronically stressful. Employees typically present themselves as responsible actors tasked with maintaining order and safety. They frequently intervene in different situations in and around the store to de-escalate conflicts, protect colleagues, and manage volatile customers. Their stories highlight these “heroic” interventions, but also convey recurring threats and violent confrontations. The tension between meaningful work and persistent risk is central to how they understand their roles. In these stories, unsafety becomes patterned and predictable. Two dominant threatening characters emerge: criminal gangs and drug addicts. Gangs are depicted as organized and violent, tied to territorial disputes over drugs and protection. In contrast, drug addicts emerge as unpredictable and unstable, posing a different kind of danger. As one staff member with more than ten years of experience working the checkout explained:

The work environment at the grocery store is experienced as marked by constant safety risks due to ongoing drug dealing on the premises. Employees recounted finding drugs hidden among groceries and witnessing drug transactions taking place in the aisles. Employees have observed fatal shootings inside or just outside the store and have acted as first responders, performing CPR and contacting the police. One informant had witnessed three murders in six years, underscoring the extreme conditions in which some employees work. Despite this violence, employees experience a strong sense of purpose, viewing their work as contributing to the stability and well-being of the neighbourhood.

Consumers high on drugs use are portrayed as a distinct source of threat, largely because their behaviour is seen as volatile and difficult to predict. This unpredictability creates a constant sense of insecurity. A frontline employee with many years of experience working at a large grocery store in southern Sweden explained:

In this story, retail safety is restored through collective action. Staff portray themselves as supporting one another in responding quickly to threats and establishing new safety routines. At the same time, however, they recount a contrasting subplot of delayed security-guard responses of 20–25 min, which fuels skepticism about their reliability: “Just because he's in uniform doesn't mean he makes staff feel safer” (I14). Employees also describe increased precautions during closing hours, such as parking near exits and being accompanied by guards. “We park our cars near the exit, and we always have two guards with us in the parking lot” (I16). Similarly, a store manager keeps her car nearby but discreetly to avoid drawing attention.

Anxiety and stress often surface after an incident, shaping how staff subsequently experience their work and perceive its risks. Encounters with customers affected by drug use escalate quickly, from verbal abuse to physical violence, triggered by seemingly minor provocations. As one store manager noted:

The ultimate consequence of failing safety measures is narrated as retail exit. Managers recount withdrawal from vulnerable areas as a last resort, taken only when risks are perceived as unmanageable. A district manager in a vulnerable area in southern Sweden explained:

Stories of threatening consumer behaviour highlight the persistence of in-store violence and position safety concerns within a broader story about the retail landscape. In these narratives, insecurity is intertwined with declining purchasing power, low store profitability, and limited appeal to external consumers. Public housing companies often appear as supporting actors whose efforts to sustain essential retail services become part of the wider narrative of maintaining community stability.

These narratives present a storyline in which violent incidents, structural pressures, and deteriorating local market conditions mutually reinforce one another, underscoring that the store is embedded in a vulnerable retailscape.

The second recurring plot focuses on tensions among stakeholders operating in vulnerable retailscapes. In this plot, the physical environment is an important character. One subplot emphasises the high cost and complexity of renovating malls in vulnerable areas. These neighbourhoods were originally designed for commuting residents but have since become associated with decline and insecurity. Municipal officers often frame such malls as products of modernist planning ideals (see Sennett, 1978; Gehl, 2013), characterised by separation and enclosure. Their inward-facing layouts, ring roads, and cul-de-sacs create isolation, restrict pedestrian flow, and enable criminal groups to monitor and control the surrounding area.

As one municipal safety officer noted:

In an effort to improve safety, malls in vulnerable areas are undergoing major renovations. Property owners and urban planners share a vision of replacing closed, car park-surrounded complexes with mixed-use housing and active ground floors (I31, I45, I48, I51). The aim is to attract more affluent residents and visitors, and to reduce the area's isolation from the city (cf. Jacobs, 1961). Relocation strategies also play a role. Public housing companies and municipal offices have moved administrative staff into vulnerable areas (I52, I45), which in turn increases the local consumer base. While stakeholders acknowledge the potential safety benefits of redevelopment, they also highlight its drawbacks, particularly the long periods during which customers have restricted access and the increased operational costs. One grocery store manager recalled a property owner who “just drew a few lines on a napkin showing how walls and rooms could be moved, without understanding how complicated our refrigeration and freezer systems are …” (I21). A retail district manager made a similar observation:

A common story among private property managers is that safety problems can be addressed through physical modifications to the shopping centre and its surroundings, drawing on the principles of CPTED. This story highlights measures such as improved lighting, vegetation removal, and redesigned sightlines to enhance visibility and reduce opportunities for crime (see Ceccato and Nalla, 2020; Cozens and Love, 2015). A sustainability manager at a major private property company told:

Efforts to improve mall safety are also narrated through the introduction of uniform rules and regulations, such as standardised signage and coordinated opening hours for grocery stores and smaller retailers. Another property manager said:

Property owners commonly associate experiences of unsafety with malls characterised by disorganisation and weak structural coherence. These narratives typically focus on small retailers, whose limited resources constrain their ability to participate in safety initiatives (I48, I50). Although involving both large and small retailers in a shared safety vision is considered important, such collaborations rarely materialise in practice, particularly for small shopkeepers. The sustainability manager continued:

Furthermore, property owners experience conflicting expectations between public and private interests as they navigate experiences of insecurity in vulnerable retailscapes. Although formal collaboration policies exist between the police, municipalities, and public housing companies, these partnerships are often difficult to translate into practice, even when stakeholders agree on desired actions. Public organisations are frequently portrayed as ineffective in driving change, while the private sector is positioned as possessing superior financial, planning, and implementation expertise. This experience was echoed by an retail store manager:

Experiences of unsafety are navigated here through narratives that depict public housing companies as ineffective and, at times, as convenient scapegoats for broader structural problems. At the same time, public organisations are expected to assume more long-term responsibility for safety work in vulnerable areas than private landlords. When multiple property managers operate within the same retail landscape, unclear boundaries between property divisions can generate tension and conflict. The following two contrasting narratives from a vulnerable area in eastern Sweden illustrate this dynamic. The first is from a shopping centre manager at a private property company:

By contrast, a manager from a public housing company in the same area recalled how increasing safety measures in the shopping centre had actually led to increased conflict in the surrounding neighbourhood, creating challenges for other property owners.

These narratives highlight the conflicting ways in which experiences of unsafety are constructed and who is considered responsible for addressing them. They construct safety not as the outcome of isolated measures, but as something that requires relationship-oriented efforts, such as involving local residents to act as wardens in the mall (I47, I51).

The third plot emphasises the fragility of the local community, who constitute a vital customer base in vulnerable areas. Here, storying unsafety entails weaving together socio-economic pressures and retail vulnerability. High unemployment is narrated as reducing purchasing power, thereby undermining the customer base for grocery chains and niche businesses, including exchange offices, travel agencies, and ethnic shops. At the same time, stakeholders emphasise that retail stores fulfil a range of functions beyond commerce. They are presented as social and cultural hubs that contribute to the wider community. Frontline employees in particular cast the grocery store as a vital social space that supports safety through informal assistance and everyday interaction. Store managers also tell this story (I10, I15), portraying stores as places where lost children are cared for, elderly residents receive help, and community members seek support. As postal services are often integrated, staff also support migrant residents by providing translations and helping them to navigate public services (I7, I5, I10). As one store manager put it:

Staff draw on narratives of building local social ties and organising community activities in order to counteract experiences of unsafety in vulnerable retailscapes. These efforts include engaging with children and young people to steer them away from gangs (see Razalan et al., 2017), offering homework support, sponsoring sports events and providing employment opportunities for local young people. Some store managers present themselves as community saviours, strengthening the neighbourhood's connections with wider society: “Without the grocery store and its engaged staff, there would only be drug dealing here” (I25).

Another narrative focuses on the importance of local knowledge. Around a third of store managers grew up in vulnerable areas, and they argue that this background gives them an advantage when countering experiences of unsafety and equips them with the practical tools needed to handle unsafe situations. Community embeddedness is cast as a key asset in creating a safer store experience.

Staff with long-standing ties to the area were considered better equipped to convey a sense of safety to consumers. Their familiarity with local customers and neighbourhood rhythms helped them build trust and create a safer shopping environment. This local knowledge was viewed as irreplaceable by formal training or managerial guidelines. A regional manager explained:

Local knowledge was narrated as enabling staff to anticipate, defuse, and manage interactions with consumers perceived as threatening. This storyline once again positions the employee as a heroic problem-solver who invests significant emotional and practical labour in navigating unsafety experiences. Consequently, working with unsafety becomes individualised, relying on personal initiative and tacit knowledge rather than formal procedures or organisational support.

The analysis identified three narrative plots through which stakeholders' experiences of unsafety are navigated in vulnerable retailscapes. Stories of threatening consumers demonstrate how frontline employees navigate unsafe situations in stores and how customer interactions and service delivery can make the physical environment feel safe or unsafe. Unsafe situations can arise in encounters with managers, customers and colleagues, and become normalised through everyday routines. Employees recount moments of personal heroism, such as stopping shoplifters or responding to shootings. However, they also emphasise the importance of teamwork and shared procedures for managing unsafe situations.

Stories of hostile environments highlight safety problems at the boundary between the store and the shopping centre, stressing difficulties in coordinating initiatives among stakeholders with conflicting interests. Vulnerable retailscapes are portrayed as unsafe due to weak safety measures, unclear responsibilities and complex stakeholder relations. Renovation projects aim to attract new customers but also create operational and financial challenges, while public and private actors differ in their expectations of safety collaboration.

Stories about fragile communities emphasise empathy, social support and local knowledge to ensure neighbourhood well-being and long-term safety. Stakeholders describe the presence of retailers as socially valuable, contributing to stability and offering informal services such as postal help, translation and everyday problem-solving. Local knowledge is framed as crucial for store operations, social control and understanding consumer behaviour.

Table 1 illustrates how these stories are shaped by situational conditions and activated by particular catalysts. These catalysts generate experiences associated with unsafety, such as unpredictability, emotional pressure, and reduced control. The action measures identified across the three plots show how retail stakeholders navigate unsafety through individual practices, organizational interventions, and community-oriented collaborations.

In line with research into consumer experience (Gahler et al., 2023; Becker and Jaakkola, 2020), the findings demonstrate how experiences of unsafety are navigated through narrative plots. Although such experiences are subjective and shaped by external factors, retailers can influence how frontline staff and consumers respond to unsafe situations by enhancing visibility, providing de-escalation training and collaborating with community partners. At the same time, retail operations must take into account local dynamics beyond managerial control when working to enhance safety.

This paper adopts a narrative approach to examine how retail stakeholders, including property managers, municipal officers, and frontline staff, navigate experiences of unsafety in vulnerable retail environments. Rather than equating unsafety with the absence of crime or relying solely on preventive or security measures within stores, the study highlights how experiences of unsafety are negotiated and managed in everyday retail practice. A recurring narrative theme is the romanticisation of employees' individual, heroic and resourceful responses to threats, which can limit retailers' engagement in structured action plans and safety collaborations. However, the mutual creation of unsafe conditions by retailers and their local consumers underscores the need for stronger collaboration between retailers, municipalities, and local communities. These findings emphasise the importance of acknowledging both individual agency and collective responsibility in shaping retail safety.

The study contributes to existing research by expanding the concept of retail safety to include not only in-store atmospherics but also the broader retailscape, over which retailers have limited control. Narratives shape action measures in the store and in the local community, while also providing a means for staff to articulate concerns. Understanding unsafety as a narrative process opens new avenues for both research and practice. This perspective encourages retailers to consider the cultural and communicative dimensions of safety alongside structural and procedural interventions.

The study underscores the need for ongoing, tailored in-store policies and training to help frontline staff manage experiences of unsafety, particularly encounters with customers perceived as threatening. High turnover and the recruitment of young, inexperienced employees make continuous on-the-job training essential. Equally important is creating a collaborative work environment where employees can share their experiences of uncertainty, as experiences of unsafety vary across situations. Increasing the flow of people in the store and improving visual connectivity, such as between the cashier and the entrance, can reduce isolation and support quicker responses to incidents. Attracting consumers from other neighbourhoods can also help revitalise vulnerable retailscapes. Finally, retailers should build local partnerships to address safety challenges collectively, enabling coordinated and sustainable solutions beyond individual staff efforts.

While this study focuses on how retail stakeholders navigate experiences of unsafety, future research could examine the experiences of consumers, both local and from more affluent areas, when visiting stores in vulnerable retailscapes. Further studies might also explore how retail employees negotiate unsafety across different retail formats and urban contexts. An important avenue for inquiry is whether responsibility for store-level unsafety should remain solely with retail management or be integrated into broader, cross-sector policy frameworks.

1. Can you tell us about your role and responsibilities in this retail setting?

2. How long have you worked here, and what attracted you to this job? Have you previously worked in retail?

3. Do you live in the area?

4. How would you describe the area where your store is located?

5. What kinds of safety challenges do you typically face in your daily work?

6. Can you recall a specific incident when you felt unsafe at work?

7. What were your immediate thoughts and feelings during the event?

8. What actions did you or others take afterward?

9. Looking back, how do you make sense of that event now?

10. Has it changed how you approach your work or interact with others?

11. Are there any routines, strategies, or support systems you rely on?

12. Do you feel that unsafety is a recurring issue in your workplace?

13. What kinds of situations tend to feel most unsafe?

14. How do you think the location or neighbourhood influences these experiences?

    • For retail management: How do you collaborate with other actors in the area on safety?

15. What support (from management, authorities, community) do you receive?

    • For retail management: How do you support your employees?

1. Can you tell us about your role and responsibilities within your organization?

2. How long have you worked in this role, and what is your professional background?

3. What areas or neighbourhoods are you currently responsible for?

4. How would you describe the social and physical environment of these areas?

5. What kinds of challenges do you and your colleagues typically face in your work related to public safety or urban management?

6. Can you recall a situation in the area where unsafety became a pressing issue, either for residents, retail workers, or your organization?

7. What were your immediate thoughts and reactions during or after the event?

8. How did your organization respond, and what actions were taken by others (e.g. police, retailers, housing companies)?

9. How did your colleagues perceive and respond to the situation?

10. Looking back, how do you interpret or make sense of that event now?

11. What do you think contributed to the situation?

12. Has it influenced how you approach your work or collaborate with other actors in the area?

13. Are there routines, strategies, or support systems that help you navigate these challenges?

14. How do you think the built environment, housing conditions, or commercial activity influence experiences of safety?

15. What kinds of collaboration exist between your organization and others (e.g. police, retailers, social services) to address unsafety?

The supplementary material for this article can be found online.