The Influence of National Culture on Evacuation Response Behaviour and Time: An Agent-Based Approach
Authors: 
Elvira Van Damme, Natalie van der Wal, Gert Jan Hofstede, Frances BrazierAuthors Info & Claims
Elvira Van Damme, Natalie van der Wal, Gert Jan Hofstede, Frances BrazierAuthors Info & ClaimsPages 41 - 56
Abstract
“How does culture, in combination with cues, settings and affiliation, influence response-phase behaviour and time and total evacuation time?”. A questionnaire and an agent-based model for a case study of a library evacuation in Czech Republic, Poland, Turkey and the UK have been developed to answer this question. Our questionnaire, conducted among 442 respondents (N = 105 from Czech Republic, N = 106 from Poland, N = 106 from Turkey and N = 125 from the United Kingdom), shows significant differences in the number of performed response tasks per culture - whereby Turkish respondents perform the most response tasks and British the least - and the results were directly implemented in our agent-based model. Simulation results show: (1) these differences - in combination with emergent effects for task choice and agent interactions - directly translate into the average response and evacuation times being highest for Turkey, followed by Poland, Czech Republic, and the UK, (2) cues, setting and affiliation influence response and evacuation time - such as being informed by staff giving a negative correlation and evacuating in groups a positive correlation with response time -, while the magnitude of these effects differ per culture. Our results suggest that faster response times might be related to dimensions of national culture, such as weak uncertainty avoidance and high individualism.
References
[1]
Almejmaj M, Skorinko JL, and Meacham BJ The effects of cultural differences between the us and Saudi Arabia on emergency evacuation-analysis of self reported recogntion/reaction times and cognitive state Case Stud. Fire Saf. 2016 7 1-7
[2]
Brennan P Modelling cue recognition and pre-evacuation response Fire Saf. Sci. 2000 6 1029-1040
[3]
Cohen AB Many forms of culture Am. Psychol. 2009 64 3 194-204
[4]
Day RC, Hulse LM, and Galea ER Response phase behaviours and response time predictors of the 9/11 world trade center evacuation Fire Technol. 2013 49 3 657-678
[5]
Formolo D, Bosse T, and van der Wal N Staab S, Koltsova O, and Ignatov DI Studying the impact of trained staff on evacuation scenarios by agent-based simulation Social Informatics 2018 Cham Springer 85-96
[6]
Fridolf K, Nilsson D, and Frantzich H Fire evacuation in underground transportation systems: a review of accidents and empirical research Fire Technol. 2013 49 2 451-475
[7]
Galea, E.R., Markus, S., Deere, S.J., Filippidis, L.: Investigating the impact of culture on evacuation response behaviour (2015)
[8]
Galea, E., Sharp, G., Deere, S., Filippidis, L.: Investigating the impact of culture on evacuation behavior - a Turkish data-set, vol. 10 (2012).
[9]
Hofstede G, Hofstede GJ, and Minkov M Cultures and Organizations - Software of the Mind: Intercultural Cooperation and its Importance for Survival 2010 3 New York McGraw-Hill
[10]
Kobes M, Helsloot I, Vries D, and Post J Building safety and human behaviour in fire: a literature review Fire Saf. J. 2010 45 1-11
[11]
Kuligowski E Predicting human behavior during fires Fire Technol. 2013 49 1 101-120
[12]
Kuligowski, E.D., Peacock, R.D., Hoskins, B.L.: A Review of Building Evacuation Models; 2nd Edition. NIST Technical Note 1680, p. 36 (2010)
[13]
Lazo JK, Bostrom A, Morss RE, Demuth JL, and Lazrus H Factors affecting hurricane evacuation intentions Risk Anal. 2015 35 10 1837-1857
[14]
Levine R and Norenzayan A The pace of life in 31 countries J. Cross-cult. Psychol. 1999 30 178-205
[15]
Lin J, Zhu R, Li N, and Becerik-Gerber B Do people follow the crowd in building emergency evacuation? A cross-cultural immersive virtual reality-based study Adv. Eng. Inf. 2020 43 101040
[16]
Lindell MK and Perry RW The protective action decision model: theoretical modifications and additional evidence Risk Anal. 2012 32 4 616-632
[17]
Litvin S Cross-cultural research: are researchers better served by knowing respondents’ country of birth, residence, or citizenship? J. Travel Res. 2003 42 186-190
[18]
Liu Y, Zhang Z, and Mao Z Analysis of influencing factors in pre-evacuation time using interpretive structural modeling Saf. Sci. 2020 128
[19]
Matsumoto D Culture, context, and behavior J. Pers. 2007 75 6 1285-1320
[20]
Pan X, Han CS, Dauber K, and Law KH Human and social behavior in computational modeling and analysis of egress Autom. Constr. 2006 15 448-461
[21]
Samochine, D.A., Boyce, K., Shields, J.: An investigation into staff behaviour in unannounced evacuations of retail stores - implications for training and fire safety engineering. In: Fire Safety Science, pp. 519–530 (2005).
[22]
Samovar L, Porter R, McDaniel E, and Roy C Communication Between Cultures 2016 Boston Cengage Learning
[23]
Sime J Movement toward the familiar Environ. Behav. 1985 17 697-724
[24]
Sime, J.: Understanding human behaviour in fires-an emerging theory of occupancy. University of Ulster Faculty of Engineering, School of the Built Environment, Fire Safety Engineering Research and Technology Marks and Spencer Guest Lecture, Ulster (1999)
[25]
Sime JD Affiliative behaviour during escape to building exits J. Environ. Psychol. 1983 3 1 21-41
[26]
Van Damme, E.R.I., van der Wal, C.N., Galea, E., Minkov, M.: Unpublished manuscript: the effect of national culture on evacuation task behaviour: a cross-cultural survey (2022)
[27]
Van Damme, E.: The influence of culture on evacuation response task behaviour: data and model (2021). https://github.com/elviravandamme/EvacuationResponseCulture
[28]
Vistnes, J., Grubits, S.J., He, Y.: A Stochastic approach to occupant pre-movement in fires. In: Fire Safety Science, pp. 531–542 (2005).
Index Terms
- The Influence of National Culture on Evacuation Response Behaviour and Time: An Agent-Based Approach
Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.
Recommendations
Intelligent Evacuation Management Systems: A Review
Regular Papers, Survey Papers and Special Issue on Recommender System BenchmarksCrowd and evacuation management have been active areas of research and study in the recent past. Various developments continue to take place in the process of efficient evacuation of crowds in mass gatherings. This article is intended to provide a ...
Using Apples and Oranges to Judge Quality? Selection of Appropriate Cross-National Indicators of Response Quality in Open-Ended Questions
Methodological studies usually gauge response quality in narrative open-ended questions with the proportion of nonresponse, response length, response time, and number of themes mentioned by respondents. However, not all of these indicators may be ...
How Social Ties Influence Hurricane Evacuation Behavior
Natural disasters bring enormous costs every year, both in terms of lives and materials. Evacuation from potentially affected areas stands out among the most critical factors that can reduce mortality and vulnerability to crisis. We know surprisingly ...
Comments
Information & Contributors
Information
Published In
May 2022
156 pages
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023.
Publisher
Springer-Verlag
Berlin, Heidelberg
Publication History
Published: 12 January 2023
Author Tags
Qualifiers
- Article
Contributors
Other Metrics
Bibliometrics & Citations
Bibliometrics
Article Metrics
- 0Total Citations
- 0Total Downloads
- Downloads (Last 12 months)0
- Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
Reflects downloads up to 13 Jan 2025