The Influence of Herding on Departure Choice in Case of an Evacuation

Design and Analysis of a Serious Gaming Experimental Set-up

Doctoral thesis (2016)

Authors

M. van den Berg Transport and Planning - CEG
Research Group
Transport and Planning (CEG) (TU Delft)
Copyright: © 2016 M. van den Berg
DOI
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https://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:dc3bb80c-781f-4eb6-b331-356a0165bdef
Evacuation Herding Serious gaming Natural disaster Departure choice
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Published Date

2016

Language

English

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Faculty

Civil Engineering & Geosciences

Department

Transport and Planning

Research Group

Transport and Planning

Abstract

Extensive research is available on travel choice behaviour which occurs during evacuations in case of natural disasters. Due to the disadvantages of existing data collection techniques, more research is needed to better understand evacuation choice behaviour. The main objective of this thesis is twofold: (1) to develop, apply and assess a new experimental set-up to study evacuation choice behaviour and (2) to quantify the effect of herding on evacuation choice behaviour.
The developed experimental set-up consists of the serious game Everscape and a questionnaire. In Everscape, participants are confronted with an earthquake and have to evacuate from a tsunami. The Everscape data consist per second of the exact location and viewing direction of each participant. The questionnaire collects information on characteristics of the participants (e.g. age, gender) and focusses on what participants did during the Everscape part of the experiment and why they did this.
In total 14 experiments were conducted in which around 400 people participated. The data collected with these experiments were analysed and two main conclusions were drawn. On the one hand, the results support results from literature, meaning realistic evacuation behaviour is found with the experimental set-up. On the other hand, a first step is made towards validly quantifying the effect of herding behaviour on evacuation decisions with empirical data.