Study of Effective Corridor Design to Improve Wayfinding in Underground Malls

Abstract

In retail space, wayfinding difficulties can cause problems, such as loss of time, stress, or discomfort, negatively affecting the shopping experience of consumers and even their patronage intentions. Although studies have reported that space configuration may facilitate navigation, there has been a lack of detailed discussion, particularly in underground malls, where people often encounter wayfinding issues. In this study, a series of exit-finding tasks in virtual malls were simulated to determine if it was practical to encourage turn taking by changing the corridor width, length, height, or angle. The results showed that people have a right-turn preference during exit finding. Moreover, exit-finders mostly prefer taking the upward pathway via stairs followed by corridors with broader widths or curved corners, exhibiting visible and similar navigation effects. Shorter corridors have a visible but relatively small affinity. This study provides some empirical evidence of how the corridor configuration influences the turn taking of people and provides a theoretical reference for adding a guiding function to the spatial arrangement in underground malls.

Isovists compactness and stairs as predictors of evacuation route choice

“…Respondents did not differentiate between medium and long corridors in this study; the crucial difference observed was that the shortest corridors were chosen more often. These results were expected and correspond to previous observations 43 . Also, the data persuasively demonstrate that respondents consider the presence of stairs in the corridor as a very strong cue for an evacuation route, since the likelihood of selecting a corridor with stairs was almost 10 times (or 15 times for the model with random slope terms for participants included) higher than selecting a corridor without stairs.…”

“…When combining these factors, brightness increased the probability of choosing a wider corridor. Zhang and Park 43 studied the in uence of width, length, and height of corridors on the search for exits in underground malls, and also con rmed the wide corridor preference.…”

“…The selected corridor parameters are generally present in every building around the globe. They represent basic parts of the construction plans or building information models (BIM) and, as opposed to decorations, surfaces or even evacuation signs, they are likely to remain unchanged after the construction of the building is nished 43 . At the same time, they serve as a suitable input for modelling evacuation scenarios, for example through agent models 4 .…”

“…Although these selected parameters have been already investigated in several studies 7,27,43,44,47,48,51,52,59 , a considerable research gap still persists. Many previous studies lacked the evacuation context [46][47][48] , or did not study these parameters systematically (e.g., Zhang & Park 43 studied only a subset of all possible combinations of the given corridor length and width). No previous study was found that would deal with all the selected parameters and their interaction at the same time.…”

“…The corridor length can be related to curiosity and the desire to explore, where the longer corridors can provide more information than the shorter ones [46][47][48] . In game-like way nding tasks, respondents preferred longer corridors 47,48 ; however during an evacuation, a well-known and anticipated strategy of choosing the shortest route prevails 43 .…”