Examining passengers' perceptions and awareness of emergency wayfinding and procedure in airports

This study aims to examine the passengers' awareness and perceptions of the emergency way-finding tools and procedure in the airport. In addition, the study also investigates the relationship of passengers' perceptions of feeling safe at the airport with the awareness of way-finding tools and procedure. A survey of 500 respondents in Melbourne Airport in Australia and 450 respondents in Qingdao International Airport in China showed that the passengers' awareness of emergency way-finding tools and procedure varied in the two airports. While most of the passengers at Melbourne Airport were unfamiliar with emergency way-finding tools, majority of the passengers at Qingdao airport were familiar with those tools. In both airports, passengers' perceptions of feeling safe in the airport had positive relationship with situational awareness, with them being able to report the suspicious items or suspicious passengers' behaviour in the airport. Interestingly, a negative association of feeling safe was observed with emergency wayfinding. Further, some differences in the understanding of emergency way finding tools and procedure between males and females as well as among the different age groups were observed. Our findings show that understanding the passengers' perceptions and knowledge of emergency evacuation tools and procedure in different regions or culture is important to develop a robust emergency plans and procedure in the airport. In future, it is recommended to examine if the correlation between different culture and emergency wayfinding is additionally driven by the architectural layout and features of the airports.