Cultural differences in an evacuation scenario - A study comparing Australian and Swedish responses

Sammanfattning: Experimental fire drills were conducted in Sweden and Australia to investigate if culture has an influence on human behaviour in evacuation scenarios. The studied variables of interest were the participants’ association to the fire alarm, their feelings during the event, premovement time and group behaviour. Seven fire drills were conducted in Sweden and six in Australia during regular tutorials at universities. The participants were a total of 257 university students of both sexes. Questionnaires, video recordings and semi-structured interviews were used to collect the data. The conclusions were that the Australians interpreted the fire alarm as more serious than the Swedish students both regarding their associations to the alarm and also how they felt during the fire drill. There was no significant difference between the two countries for the pre-movement time and group behaviour. More data would increase the reliability of the conclusions.