In my geographical location, player killers, or even people interested in PvP encounters are extremely rare. Our player faction plays in open. Many of our new members were concerned about gankers due to various online posts about them, but as they started playing alongside us in open and none of them got destroyed by miscreants, they realised it wasn‘t so bad, plus everyone gets to meet everyone else with minimal trouble. Sure we have the odd ganker or two but they have to stay at Shinrarta Dezhra to even be able to meet any randoms. I bet they give up in disgust after a few hours. The vast majority times I can supercruise straight to my destination in Shinrarta Dezhra or Deciat and not see a single CMDR.
I enjoy baiting gankers in cheese ships so if one is reported (word gets out fast in our region, it’s big news to us) I’ll try to head on over to annoy them for a while.
On the other hand, nobody thinks any less of anyone playing in solo when they have a hold full of mined minerals, or weeks worth of cartographic data. You do what you do to get the results you want.