The Impact of the Herd Splitting Effect on Pedestrian Risk Decision-Making Behavior During Fire Evacuation in School Library

Jianping Li; Chuanjin Liu

doi:10.6918/IJOSSER.202411_7(11).0006

Authors

Jianping Li
Chuanjin Liu

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6918/IJOSSER.202411_7(11).0006

Keywords:

Immersive virtual reality; Pedestrian wayfinding behavior; Fire emergency evacuation; Herd splitting effect; Fire smoke; Risk decision.

Abstract

Fire is a major issue that threatens the safety of people's lives and property, so it is important to enhance research on the safe evacuation of fires. This study is based on an immersive virtual reality (VR) experiment that examines the wayfinding choices made by pedestrians during a library fire under conditions of reduced ambient visibility due to smoke generation and the simultaneous presence of different herd splitting patterns as indicated by non-game players. Participants were asked to engage in evacuation tasks in a random order across six different experimental scenarios. Results showed that pedestrians generally avoid using smoke routes for evacuation, but make risky decisions to cross smoke routes when they are consistent with the majority of the crowd's evacuation choices. Secondly, under the influence of the herd splitting effect, pedestrians tend to follow the route chosen by the majority of the evacuating crowd. Thirdly, increasing smoke concentration weakens the influence of the herd splitting effect and pedestrians choose to avoid smoke. In addition, Men and women showed significant gender differences in evacuation time and evacuation route choice when faced with the same evacuation scenario. This experiment extends the study of pedestrian wayfinding behaviour in fire situations and provides some empirical evidence for further improvement of fire evacuation.

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