Response to emergency way-finding systems by people from different cultures

Some colours might have different connotations depending on people’s cultural backgrounds. When talking about evacuation, the colour employed for exit signs and flashing lights plays a significant role because it is responsible for conveying a message to the evacuees, either danger or safety. The aims of this study are to evaluate the influence of red and green emergency way-finding systems on the way-finding decisions of people with different cultural backgrounds and to analyse the possible impact of the distance to the means of egress when having these kinds of systems. Experiments in which sixty persons participated, namely from China and from different European countries, were performed in a Virtual Reality environment. The results suggest that, in case of an emergency situation, red and green have similar connotations for people from the two studied cultural backgrounds. More specifically, Chinese and Europeans seem to make their choice of exit in a comparable way, green being the colour of choice even when the distance to travel to the means of egress is longer.