Pedestrian behavior and exit selection in evacuation of a corridor – An experimental study

► Pedestrians’ egress behavior in congestion is studied with an experiment. ► Egress is faster when people pursue self interest instead of trying to cooperate. ► People make systematic errors when trying to select the fastest exit route. In this paper, we present an experiment whose purpose was to study evacuees’ exit selection under different behavioral objectives. The experiment was conducted in a corridor with two exits located asymmetrically. This geometry was used to make most participants face a nontrivial decision on which exit to use. We analyze the behavior on a macroscopic level using statistical methods. Our results suggest that the members of an evacuating crowd may not be able to make optimal decisions when assessing the fastest exit to evacuate. In addition, the egress time of the whole crowd turns out to be shorter when the evacuees behave egoistically instead of behaving cooperatively. This is an interesting result because many studies on real emergencies show that evacuees tend to cooperate and act altruistically.