Influence of subsequent path and pressure on pedestrian route choice in emergency evacuations

Ruoyu Li, Xiang Wang, Ruggiero Lovreglio, Heng Ding, Qiao Wang, Juan Chen, Eric Jiang and Jian Ma

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2025, vol. 657, issue C

Abstract: Route choice significantly impacts pedestrian evacuation efficiency. Previous studies have mainly focused on environmental or pedestrian conditions in single enclosed spaces, with limited consideration for the effects of successive paths, including both the current paths and subsequent paths beyond the room where pedestrians are located. In this study, we propose a new experimental setup with multiple subsequent paths. We carried out a series of single-person experiments to investigate the effect of different pressure levels on pedestrian route choice in multiple scenarios with different subsequent paths. The results indicate that path length is an important factor for the single person route choice, and the greater the length difference between alternative paths, the higher the proportion of pedestrians choosing the shorter path, reaching up to 100 %. Participants seem to have a short-term oriented behavior, when the total path length is the same, over 60 % of participants chose the shorter current path in all scenarios, and with a 21.67 % higher selection rate observed in high-pressure scenarios compared to low-pressure scenarios. The results of the logit regression analysis also significantly indicate the impact of pressure on pedestrian route choice, and the length of the current path has a greater influence on route choice than the length of the subsequent path. These results provide new evidence for future evacuation design and management in enclosed spaces.

Keywords: Route choice; Subsequent path; Pressure level; Evacuation experiment; Short-term oriented behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:657:y:2025:i:c:s0378437124007611

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2024.130252

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