Participants
In total,64 participants with normal vision or correction,no color blindness or other eye diseases were included in our research,and 32 participants were men;the other participants were women.They were randomly divided into 4 groups of 16 people,equally male and female.The experimental groups as shown in Table 2.The participants in the included articles had a mean age of 22–23 years and an equal percentage of men and women.Each participant received 50 CNY for their participation.The participants were informed that they could quit the experiment at any time and were asked to sign an informed consent form before the experiment began.The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Sichuan Normal University and all experimental procedures were performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.
Experimental equipment
To compare the different influences of modern navigation systems and traditional paper maps on emergency evacuation behavior in indoor fires,we selected one of the common navigation methods in VR,the YAH navigation map,which can be marked in real time for participant spatial locations that can be experimented with,and a traditional paper map to experiment.
Experimental environment scenario
In April 2021,a major fire in a commercial square in Anhui Province resulted in four deaths. In this experiment,we selected it as the script and took a medium-sized shopping mall as the experimental scene.Before the fire in the mall,the milk tea shop is launching a new ice cream.To eat the ice cream,everyone crowded in front of the milk tea shop to wait.In the experiment,all participants needed to arrive from the same mall entrance to buy ice cream at the milk cream store selling ice cream.
Experimental scene
The IVE used in this study is the first floor of a large virtual shopping mall,50 meters long, 40 meters wide,and 4 meters high.As seen in Fig. 1,there are 15 east-west stores in the mall,and a comprehensive mall is distributed in the center of the mall,including jewelry,clothing and other shops.Milk tea shop,route,and fire point have been replaced by small red flag,color line,and five-pointed star,respectively.
The mall has designed 4 conventional entrances and exits and five evacuation routes,as shown in Fig. 2.Furthermore,the participants did not walk through the walls across the IVE.As shown in a pentagram symbol in Fig. 1,there is 1 fire site for emergency fire experiment conditions.Flames at the fire point can spread to 3 m*4 m and smoke to a considerable area to ensure that they can be seen anywhere in the mall (Fig. 3).
Experimental design
In this experiment,participants were divided into four groups,two of which needed to experiment by using paper maps,while the other two groups were required under the guidance of the YAH navigation map.In the experiment, the participants needed to complete the buying and evacuation tasks.As shown in Table 2.
During the buying task,participants in the paper map and YAH navigation map groups needed to arrive at the milk tea shop at normal walking speed (1.2 m/s) to buy ice cream.Participants in the YAH navigation map group needed to set 5 coupons in the designated shop in turn using the following routes:from the entrance,successively through the bookstore,dining area, lounge,department store area,and clothing store to the makeup shop.After the participants arrived at the milk tea shop,fires suddenly occurred,and the participants were required to perform the evacuation task and leave the mall as soon as possible.For evacuation tasks,we used the design between participants in 2 (spatial cognition mode:paper maps and YAH navigation maps)*2 (experimental condition:time limit and no time limit).Before the experiment,the experimenter needed to calculate the average time when the participants of the paper and YAH navigation map groups evacuated without the evacuation time limit(according to previous studies,we assumed that the evacuation time obeys the normal distribution) and calculate the limited evacuation time (the mean reduces a standard difference) as the time limit condition of the experiment.Participants in the other two papers and YAH navigation maps were evacuated under experimental time constraints.
The entire experiment lasted approximately 4 mintes-5 mintes to ensure that the participants could complete the experimental task.During the experiment,the participants used their own navigation aids to find the way,and they all participated for the first time and were unfamiliar with the experimental scene.The five evacuation routes designed in the experiment are as follows:route 1 is 40 m;route 2 is 30 m,which is the shortest evacuation route;route 3 is 60 m,which is the longest evacuation route;route 4 is 42 m;and route 5 is 50 m.As seen in Fig. 2.
Experimental procedure
The main experimental procedure of this study are summarized in Table 1.Participants arrive at the laboratory to sign the consent form and fill in the basic personal information:age,gender,occupation and so on.Then,participants were required to fill in the PANAS mood scale,enter the corresponding room showing the simple virtual environment,be familiar with the use of navigation map,operate the lever and complete the relevant tasks in the virtual environment.
Then,the experiment officially began.In the first stage,the participants of the map group freely explored the mall and arrived at the milk tea store;the YAH map group visited the designated store under the guidance of navigation to accumulate the discount coupons in proper order.The differences between the paper map group and the YAH navigation map group participants are that the paper map group participants have greater degrees of freedom in the route decisions.
In the experiment,the experimenter needed to calculate the average time when the participants of the paper and YAH navigation map groups evacuated without the evacuation time limit and calculate the limited evacuation time as the time limit condition of the experiment.Then, participants in the other two teams of paper and YAH navigation maps were evacuated under experimental time constraints.Upon arriving at the milk tea shop,a sign saying “you’ve arrived at your destination,please leave the mall as soon as possible (within 33 seconds)” appeared in front of the participants.Both virtual flames and smoke occur simultaneously.
After the experiment,participants completed the PANAS mood scale again to test the participants’ psychological stress before and after the trail,as shown in Table 1.Participants will then need to answer the following questions:
(1) Rating the use of maps and navigation;
(2) Scores the difficulty of way-finding and evacuation;
(3)Evaluates the vividness of virtual shopping malls.
Data analysis
way-finding behavior analysis
In this study,we collected six measurements to assess the performance,mainly their walking time,walking distance and route selection in the buying and evacuation tasks.The main findings of these data are summarized in the following Tables 3,4,5,6,7,8:
First,we analyzed the walking time and walking distance of buying tasks 2 (spatial cognitive method: paper map group or YAH navigation map group) and 2 (experimental conditions:time limit and no time limit) between the participants.The results showed that there were no significant differences in spatial cognitive patterns in terms of walking distance of the buying task: (F(1,30) = 0.009156,P = 0.924404,\(\text{F} \text{c}\text{r}\text{i}\text{t}=\)4.170877),as shown in Fig. 4.From the point of view of walking time,the difference of spatial cognition mode will not cause significant difference(F(1,30)=3.050157,P = 0.090963,\(\text{F} \text{c}\text{r}\text{i}\text{t}=\)4.170877.These results show that participants who use YAH navigation maps are not very different from those who use paper maps in the distance and time spent buying tasks.The difference between sex and walking distance and time was also not significant (P = 0.5>0.05;P = 0.509017>0.05).
At the same time,the variance analysis of 2 (spatial cognition: paper map group or YAH navigation map group) 2 (experimental conditions:time limit and no time limit) shows that different spatial cognitive patterns have a significant effect on the distance of evacuation:(F(1,30) = 6.595162,p = 0.015448,\(\text{F}\text{c}\text{r}\text{i}\text{t}\)=4.170877),and the differences in spatial cognition can also have a significant impact on the time of evacuation in terms of evacuation time (F(1,30)=7.52434,p = 0.01017,\(\text{F}\text{c}\text{r}\text{i}\text{t}\)=4.170877),as shown in Fig. 5.These results show that participants who used paper maps traveled longer distances (710 m vs 932 m) and took more time (666 s vs 922 s) than participants who used YAH navigation maps,as shown in Fig. 4.The difference between sex and evacuation distance and time was not significant (P = 0.52314>0.05;P= 0.382004>0.05).
Finally,the experimental results also show that there is no interaction between gender and spatial cognition;that is,there is no interaction between gender and spatial cognition on the walking time and distance of snatching and evacuation tasks.
We also performed an ANOVA with 2 (spatial cognition mode: paper map or YAH navigation map) * 2 (experimental conditions:time limit and no time limit) * 2 (evacuation behavior:time or distance).We investigated whether different spatial cognitive approaches and experimental conditions interacted with evacuation time.The results showed that different spatial cognition and experimental conditions interact with evacuation time and under evacuation time limit,in contrast to the participants in the YAH navigation map,participants using paper maps were evacuated at longer distances (F (1, 30) = 13.66,p = 0.00087,\(\text{F}\text{c}\text{r}\text{i}\text{t}\)=4.1701),(523 m vs 727 m),and more time (F(1,30)=12.067, p = 0.00158, \(\text{F}\text{c}\text{r}\text{i}\text{t}\)=4.171), (521 s vs790 s),as shown in Fig. 5.
To test for differences in sex in experiments,we performed ANO variance on 2 (spatial cognitive mode:paper or YAH navigation maps) * 2 (experimental conditions:time limit and no time limit) * 2 (gender:male or female).Experimental results showed that neither the main effect of sex nor the interaction effect between sex and other independent variables were significant.