Do people follow neighbors? An immersive virtual reality experimental study of social influence on individual risky decisions during evacuations

Abstract This study examined social influence on individual risk-taking decisions during evacuations through an immersive virtual reality (VR)-based experiment. Participants were asked to evacuate in the case of a virtual building fire. The results suggested that participants' route choices during evacuations were affected by their neighbors' behaviors. In particular, if a risky route was less preferred due to dense smoke, the effect of neighbor behavior was strongest when enticing participants to take the risky route. Nonetheless, the number of virtual neighbors did not significantly change the degree of social influence on participants' route choices. Moreover, an increase in smoke density significantly reduced the number of participants making risky decisions. The results also indicated that individuals had a tendency to follow others when making risky decisions, but they were not blindly following others. Individuals made their evacuation route decisions by engaging in comprehensive consideration of various types of environmental information.