Teng Qi, Wang Xuan, He Wu, Pan Gaofeng, Mao Yan
School of Business, Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu, China.
School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China.
Front Psychol. 2024 Jul 10;15:1417738. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1417738. eCollection 2024.
Exit selection is crucial in indoor emergency evacuation. Domestic and foreign scholars have found that exit choice behavior is influenced by three factors: environmental factors, social interactions, and individual internal factors. Previous studies have shown that in addition to a single environmental factor affecting exit decisions, the influence of other available exit options in the context can ultimately lead to a reversal of exit decisions -The context effect. However, the impact of context effects on exit decisions in emergency situations has not been thoroughly explored. Therefore, this article identifies three basic independent variables: context effects, crowd flows, and gender differences, to study the exit decisions of different gender groups facing different crowd flows, as well as how context effects affect existing exit decisions.
In this paper, we used virtual reality technology to construct an indoor fire scene and designed a total of 15 virtual experiments with different crowd distribution or context effects. 131 participants were divided into two groups, male and female, and their exit decisions were observed under different crowd flows and contextual effects.
The research results show that: 1) Both men and women have an innate preference to avoid crowded exits, and the proportion of following crowd evacuation significantly decreases when there are crowded crowds in the scene; 2) The exit decisions of female participants are more influenced by the crowd, while men tend to be more influenced by context effects when evacuating independently; 3) The context effects on exit decisions in emergency situations is statistically significant, and this performance is more significant in the male population. Further analysis reveals that similarity effects have a more significant impact on exit decisions than attraction effects.
These findings provide deeper insights into the exit choice behavior of the population and may contribute to the design of safe exits in indoor buildings. In addition, this article emphasizes the importance of context effects and provides a foundation for future research.
出口选择在室内紧急疏散中至关重要。国内外学者发现，出口选择行为受环境因素、社会互动和个体内在因素三个因素影响。以往研究表明，除单一环境因素影响出口决策外，情境中其他可用出口选项的影响最终可能导致出口决策的逆转——情境效应。然而，情境效应在紧急情况下对出口决策的影响尚未得到充分探讨。因此，本文确定了三个基本自变量：情境效应、人群流动和性别差异，以研究不同性别群体在面对不同人群流动时的出口决策，以及情境效应如何影响现有出口决策。
本文利用虚拟现实技术构建室内火灾场景，共设计了15个不同人群分布或情境效应的虚拟实验。131名参与者分为男性和女性两组，观察他们在不同人群流动和情境效应下的出口决策。
研究结果表明：1）男性和女性都有避免拥挤出口的固有偏好，当场景中有拥挤人群时，跟随人群疏散的比例显著下降；2）女性参与者的出口决策受人群影响更大，而男性在独立疏散时往往受情境效应影响更大；3）情境效应在紧急情况下对出口决策具有统计学意义，且这种表现在男性群体中更为显著。进一步分析表明，相似性效应比吸引效应对出口决策的影响更大。
这些发现为人群的出口选择行为提供了更深入的见解，可能有助于室内建筑安全出口的设计。此外，本文强调了情境效应的重要性，并为未来研究奠定了基础。
