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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 |
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1417738
An investigation into the influence of context effects on crowd exit selection under gender difference in indoor evacuation
Provisionally accepted- 1 Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu, China
- 2 School of Business, Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
- 3 South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
- 4 Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
Abstract: 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.
Keywords: Exit choice, Emergency evacuation, context effect, gender, crowd behavior
Received: 15 Apr 2024; Accepted: 11 Jun 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 Teng, Mao, Wang, He and Pan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yan Mao, Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu, China
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Qi Teng
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