A role-rule model to examine passengers likely behaviour and their perceived ability to evacuate safely from airport in an emergency evacuation

This study aims to examine the airline passengers likely behaviour and their perceived ability to evacuate safely from airport buildings in an emergency evacuation by testing and applying the socio-psychological role-rule model. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to quantitatively test the applicability of the role-rule model to explain the passengers likely behaviour in an emergency evacuation. A questionnaire survey of 500 respondents in Melbourne Airport in Australia and 450 respondents in Qingdao International Airport in China showed that passengers are likely to engage in expected behavioural responses or coping strategies (e.g., calling emergency services, leaving bags and belongings) and avoid non-typical coping strategies (e.g., pushing other passengers) in a fire evacuation. Further, passengers perceived coping strategies affected their perceived likelihood of evacuating safely. Passengers perceived that if they follow specific evacuation procedures, they would not be able to evacuate safely. Therefore, planners and managers should develop strategies and campaigns to educate people on the importance of evacuations way findings tools like emergency evacuation maps/plans, assembly area and public address systems during evacuation process. Differences were observed in the perceived ability to evacuate safely in the two airports suggesting that cultural differences are important to consider in developing robust evacuation management plans