Risk perception in fire evacuation behavior revisited: definitions, related concepts, and empirical evidence

Kinateder, Max T; Kuligowski, Erica D; Reneke, Paul A; Peacock, Richard D

doi:10.1186/s40038-014-0005-z

Fire Science Reviews

Table 1 Overview of studies on RP and evacuation

From: Risk perception in fire evacuation behavior revisited: definitions, related concepts, and empirical evidence

Ref.	Rel. ³	Scenario	N	Study population	Transfer to building fires possible? ²	Qual./Quan.	Control group	Data	Method	Measure of RP	Theory	Factors affecting RP	RP related to evacuation ³
Kuligowski and Mileti (2009)	3	Building evacuation under a terrorist attack	803	WTC occupants¹	yes	Quan.	no	Retro-spective		1 item (yes/no): “During the time when you first became aware that something had happened and when you first entered the stairwell or elevator to leave did you believe that other people were in danger of being killed?”	PADM	Environmental cues, floor level, obtained information,	No direct effect on evacuation delay (beta ≈ 0 for both towers); weak effect on information seeking behavior ( beta ≈ 0.15) in one tower, pre-evacuation actions were associated with higher perceived risk (beta ≈ 0.23 vs. beta ≈ 0.08).
Day et al. (2013)	3	Building evacuation under a terrorist attack	240	WTC occupants⁵	yes	Quan.	no	Retro-spective	Interview	7 point Likert scale (“How much at risk did you feel”)	-	Number of cues, quality of cues, distance to impact	High perceived risk predicted early responders (Beta = .36; OR = 1.44) Low perceived risk was not a predictor of delayed evacuation
Kuligowski (2011)	3	Building evacuation under a terrorist attack	252	WTC occupants⁵	yes	Qual.	no	Retro-spective	Interview	7 point Likert scale	PADM	Previous experience, hyper vigilance, cue intensity, cue identification	Perceived risk predicted evacuation decision
Sherman et al. (2011)	3	Building evacuation under a terrorist attack	1139	WTC occupants	yes	Quan.	no	Retro-spective	Question-naire	1 item asking “How serious did you think the situation was at first?” on a 4 point Likert scale	-	female, member of port authority NY/NJ, personal background variables; evacu-atingfromWTC1 (vs WTC2), more Environmental Cues, more unusual Events (context variables), lower education, longer tenure in the towers, more knowledge, more emergency preparedness	lower perceived risk:
													- less information seeking
													- more pre-evacuation actions
													- longer pre-evacuation delays (beta = −.25)
Gershon et al. (2007)	3	Building evacuation under a terrorist attack	50	WTC occupants	yes	Qual.	no	Retro-spective	In-depth Interviews (n = 30) or focus groups (n = 20)	Coding of qualitative interviews	-	-	Yes, emergent perception of risk formed by sensory cues facilitated evacuation decisions (but not the process of evacuation)
Gershon et al. (2012)	3	Building evacuation under a terrorist attack	1444	WTC occupants	yes	Qual.	Comparison to WTC occupants who were not in the building at the incident	Retro-spective	Questionnaire	Several items (number not specified), including seriousness of the situation, and concerns that the building would collapse	Behavioral Diagnostic Model	-	Yes, 70% stated that they evacuated because they appraised the situation as dangerous. Occupants who thought the situation was serious evacuated with less delay (OR = 3.78) and faster (OR = 1.80).
Caroly et al. (2013)	3	Tunnel accident and fire	11 tunnel fires	Tunnel users	With limitations	Qual.	no	Retro-spective	Review of reports, video footage, media reports	Not reported	Danger control model	Visibility of cues	Yes
Averill et al. (2012); Averill et al. (2007)	2	Building evacuation under a terrorist attack	400	WTC occupants¹	Yes		no	Retro-spective	Interviews			Seek info, environmental cues
McConnell et al. (2010)	2	Building evacuation under a terrorist attack	126	WTC occupants⁵	yes	Quan.	no	Retro-spective	Questionnaire	7 point Likert scale	-	Floor level in tower, WTC1, time (before or during evacuation)	-
Jönsson et al. (2012)	2	Elevator evacuation during an unspecified emergency	573	High-rise building occupants	Yes, with limitations	Quan.	no	Cross-sectional	Hypothetical scenario questionnaire	Rating of perceived safety of evacuation routes (two 7 point Likert scale items)	-	Building floor, evacuation method (elevator vs. staircase)	yes
Mbaye and Kouabenan (2013)	1	Accident in chemical/nuclear facility	302	Employees in chemical & nuclear facility	With limitations	Quan.	no	Cross-sectional	Questionnaire		-	locus of control, positivity bias, availability heuristic	-
Riad et al. (1999)	1	Hurricane evacuation	777	Residents in hurricane risk regions	With limitations	Quan.	no	Retro-spective	Interview		-	-	yes
Brenkert-Smith et al. (2013)	1	Wildfire evacuation	747	Wildland-urban interface (WUI) homeowners in Boulder and Larimer Counties in Colorado, USA	Yes, with limitations	Quan.	No	Prospective	Questionnaire	2 questions on perceived probability scaled to range from 0 to 100 and Likert scale for 4 variables on perceived consequences	Social amplification of risk framework	Lot size, Previous experience, social context	-
Lindell et al. (2005)	1	Hurricane evacuation	206-407	General population in hurricane area	With limitations	Quan.	no	Retro-spective	Questionnaire	-	-	-	-
Matyas et al. (2011)	1	Hurricane evacuation	448	Tourists	With limitations	Quan.	no	Cross-sectional	Questionnaire	5 point Likert scale	-	-	Yes (correlated with stated preference)
Horney et al. (2010)	1	Hurricane evacuation	570	General public	With limitations	Quan.	no	Retro-spective	Interview	3 point scale (low-middle-high)	PADM	Actual risk, homeownership,	no
Martin et al. (2009)	1	Wildfire evacuation	251	Fulltime & seasonal residents	With limitations	Quan.	no	Retro-spective	Questionnaire	5 point Likert scale	PADM	Fire experience, subjective knowledge, perceived responsibility	Yes, mediated; 38% of variance in perceived risk explained
Siebeneck and Cova (2012)	1	Flood evacuation	196	General population in flood area	With limitations	Quan.	no	Retro-spective	Questionnaire	5 point Likert scale	Threshold model of RP	Distance to threat, Time course of events, amount of property damage	Not reported
Drabek (2001)	1	Natural disaster	406	Business employees	With limitations	Qual.	no	Retro-spective	Questionnaire	4 items measuring risk-related behavior and perceived safety	Stress–strain perspective	Higher perceived risk was associated with lower amount of community disaster planning, warning messages implying that evacuation was mandatory, residing in a mobile home or apartment, working in a more formalized company, working in a younger company, and long-term event or consequences	Perceived risk predicted evacuation delay (beta = .145) multiple evacuation (beta = .158)

Note: The content of this table is solely based on the information available in the individual studies and the amount and accuracy of the reported information varies. Ref. = Reference; Rel. = Relevance; N = sample size; Quan. = Quantitative study; Qual. = Qualitative study; WTC = World Trade Center; ¹NIST WTC evacuation data base; ²yes, with limitations, no, unclear; ³If yes, describe the relation (e.g. mediated, correlated); ³ 1 = planned evacuation from a latent threat, 2 = acute evacuation from an acute threat than building fire, 3 = Fire evacuation from buildings; ⁴labeled as milling in this study; ⁵HEED data base; ⁶ no specification of actual number of participants was given in this paper.
The studies are sorted according to their relevance for RP and evacuation.

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