Bright needs, dark desires: Public preferences and balancing the benefits of artificial light and natural darkness at night in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract While serving many useful functions, artificial light at night (ALAN) also leads to the erosion of natural darkness, and of the various benefits that exposure to darkness provides. Yet, we know little about how people perceive ALAN—where they want it, why and when they prefer darkness. Using an online survey of 1000 participants broadly representative of the New Zealand adult population, we assessed participants' self‐declared importance of different benefits derived from ALAN and from natural darkness. For each benefit, we fitted a conditional inference tree with demographic, dark‐sky related and built‐environment related explanatory variables. For a subset of benefits derived from ALAN, we also assessed what people felt was the most appropriate mode of delivery (i.e. always on at night, on‐when‐needed (using sensors) or bring‐your‐own). Benefits derived from ALAN were generally rated as more important than those derived from darkness, especially for safety functions and orientation—however ratings were poorly described by the explanatory variables. Darkness benefits rated lower overall, showed less variability and were relatively well explained. Across the subset of ALAN benefits assessed, the preferred mode of delivery for at least 31% of respondents was ‘on only when needed’ (e.g. using sensors). This nationally representative study exploring public perceptions of both artificial light and natural darkness at night is the first of its kind in Aotearoa New Zealand, and possibly globally. We contribute to reframing the discourse around ALAN to consider both light and dark as essential yet countervailing resources. Our findings advocate for a more balanced and nuanced approach to nighttime lighting policy—one that recognises artificial light and darkness as coexisting, interdependent resources and that actively supports a recalibration of their respective benefits to achieve preferred future states. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.