Spatial aspects of evacuation: a closer look at user interaction during route choice

Emergencies such as evacuation from buildings are becoming the subject of research for both psychology and spatial sciences. This paper reports on one aspect of a larger project that dealt with the study of the influence of spatial parameters of buildings on decision-making during evacuation (other research objectives describe Snopková et al., 2023). In this research project, 208 participants received 20 stimuli in the form of an interactive virtual tour in which they could view the intersection (by moving the mouse). Within 8 s, they had to select one corridor that seemed safer to use in case of evacuation. In this paper, we focused on the analysis of the collected interaction data (mouse rotation) and their relationship to the laterality of the participants and the final choice of the evacuation corridor. Statistical analysis using correlation coefficients and the Welch t-test revealed no relationship between the side the participants initially turned and laterality or the final selected corridor. However, participants who chose the right corridor spent significantly more time turned to the right side and vice versa. To sum up, the presented findings support the ongoing research and discussion on human behaviour during the evacuation from a building.