ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1558115
Analysis of Pedestrian Wayfinding under Herd Effect in VR Fire Evacuation at Indoor Library: Gender Difference Considered
Provisionally accepted
- 1Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu, China
- 2School of Marxism, Chengdu College of Arts and Sciences, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
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Abstract：(1)Background:As libraries are critical areas for fire safety and evacuation, there is a need to expand research on pedestrian evacuation in this scenario; (2)Methods: We designed an immersive virtual reality (IVE) experiment to examine the wayfinding choices made by pedestrians during a library fire under conditions of different crowd patterns represented by non-game players and differences in gender ratios.162 participants were asked to engage in an evacuation task in a randomized order across sixteen different experimental scenarios；(3)Results: 1) Under the influence of crowd patterns, pedestrians tended to follow the route chosen by the majority of the evacuating crowd. 2) Pedestrians tended to follow the group with a higher proportion of males in the evacuation.3) When the proportion of males in the route chosen by the majority of the evacuating population is significantly smaller than the proportion of females, the pedestrian's choice of that route is significantly lower. 4) The gender ratio significantly attenuates the influence of the herd effect on the subjects' route decision-making. (4)Conclusions: This experiment expands the study of pedestrian routing behavior in a fire situation and provides some empirical evidence for the further improvement of fire evacuation.
Keywords: Immersive Virtual Reality, Pedestrian wayfinding behavior, Fire emergency evacuation； Crowd flow, Herd effect, Gender difference
Received: 09 Jan 2025; Accepted: 02 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li and Liu. 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: Chuanjin Liu, School of Marxism, Chengdu College of Arts and Sciences, Chengdu, 610101, Sichuan Province, China
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