Individual Behavior and Attention Distribution during Wayfinding for Emergency Shelter: An Eye-Tracking Study

Abstract

A fast evacuation from buildings to emergency shelters is necessary and important after the occurrence of a disaster. We investigated the variations in physical behaviors and cognition processes while finding emergency shelter. The on-site emergency-shelter-finding experiments were conducted in Beijing, China. Participants performed the task by using a wearable eye-tracking device. We aimed to assess three eye metrics: fixation counts, mean fixation duration, and visual attention index, to perform cognitive searching analysis for the environmental elements. The results showed that most people spend more fixation time on digital maps (297.77 ± 195.90 ms) and road conditions (239.43 ± 114.91 ms) than signs (150.90 ± 81.70 ms), buildings (153.44 ± 41.15 ms), and plants (170.11 ± 47.60 ms). Furthermore, most participants exhibit hesitation and retracing behaviors throughout the wayfinding process. The participants with relatively rich disaster experience and a proactive personality exhibit better performance in the shelter-finding task, such as a shorter retracing distance (p = 0.007) and nearer destination (p = 0.037). Eye metrics, together with the questionnaire, can mirror the complexity and heterogeneity of evacuation behavior during emergency shelter-finding. In addition, this also provides insights for the optimization of guidance sign systems and improvements in emergency management.