How to avoid running make as root in the last step of installing an application from source?

I am always reluctant to run make install as root as the last step of installing an application from source. After all, it allows executing arbitrary code form the Makefile. It has already happened to me that due to the lack of proper quoting, Makefile commands deleted things they were not supposed to delete, including files outside of the source code directory. For this reason, I am looking for a way to avoid running make install as root and restrict my activity as root to basic operations (like copying files or extracting an archive) that do not execute arbitrary code.