How risk preference affects evacuees’ route choice in buildings: An IVR-based experimental study

Abstract

During building evacuations, evacuees often tend to enter areas with smoke and flames, which contradicts established safety principles for evacuation. This paper investigates how individuals with different risk preferences process evacuation information and make route choices. 72 participants were categorized into two groups based on a risk preference questionnaire: one-third were identified as Risk Seeking Group (RSG) and the rest as Risk Averse Group (RAG). Subsequently, eye-tracking technology and immersive virtual reality (IVR) were employed to analyze the variations in behavior between these groups. The findings show that: (1) RAG exhibited a general attention bias toward risk-related information; (2) Significant differences were observed in route choice among RAG based on varying cognitive approaches; (3) While all participants acknowledged the importance of safety factors, approximately 40% behaviorally chose routes involving flames; (4) RSG prioritizes evacuation distance and evacuation efficiency in the evacuation process, achieving an average evacuation time that was 23.85% faster than that of RAG. Conversely, RAG displayed a tendency to avoid harm, even at the cost of evacuation efficiency. This paper deconstructs complex evacuation behaviors from a psychological perspective, providing a more comprehensive understanding of route choices among evacuees with different risk preferences. It serves as a reference for optimizing evacuation strategies and designing building safety features with consideration of psychological factors.