I'm tempted to agree with the PvE PG organisers being able to set a flag to noPvP, for the benefit of their members, as a default. I spend all of my time in Mobius as it does allow (when in a system with other members) some 'social' interaction in alleged safety, after all, if we wished to be playing with guns we'd not be opting out from the pleasure!
My exploration ships have shields (not massive, but not paper) and small guns, with a combat rank of Novice I shouldn't be running into Elite NPC's so I'm equipped for 'expected' encounters but, like those out on DW2, my ship would last just seconds against a determined combat equipped ship - and I'm not likely to take the 'advice' from my combat oriented peers to equip my ships to be able to survive long enough to high wake from an unwanted encounter as the liklihood of this encounter in a PvE PG should be zero...