The principles of pedestrian route choice

Abstract

Pedestrian route choice, the process by which individuals decide on their walking path between two locations, is a fundamental problem across disciplines. Because this behaviour is investigated from different conceptual and methodological angles, and because it strongly depends on the environmental context, it is challenging to establish a systematic framework for research. Here, by reviewing previous work, we identify four principles for pedestrian route choice that are relevant across disciplines. First, 'information perception' deals with how pedestrians can perceive information selectively and purposely, given the limited available information. Second, 'information integration' considers how pedestrians subjectively integrate environmental spatial information into mental representations. Third, 'responding to information' is concerned with how pedestrians tend to be attracted and repelled by specific attributes individually and how this can lead to positive or negative feedback loops across many individuals. Fourth 'decision-making mechanisms' describe how pedestrians trade off the evidence provided by different attributes. How pedestrians perceive, integrate, respond to, and act upon information is not fixed but varies with the context. We give examples for each principle and explain how these principles shape pedestrian choice behaviours. We hope this contribution provides a systematic overview of the field and helps to spark inspiration among specialists.

Keywords: decision-making; interdisciplinary studies; pedestrian behaviour; route choice; theoretical framework.

Figure 1.

Visual illustration of analysis of research on pedestrian route choice. The line chart illustrates how the number of publications per year on this topic changes over time. The pie chart shows the frequency of the research based on the discipline. Data source: Scopus (accessed 5 November 2021).

Figure 2.

(a) Conceptualized bottleneck for selective attention. (b,c) Two different processes of attention.

Figure 3.

Different representations of space: (a) original floor plan, (b) isovist map, (c) convex map, (d) axial map, (e) network representation, and (f) one possible cognitive map. The remaining panels show spatial reference frames: (g) allocentric frame and (h) egocentric frame. See text for details.

Figure 4.

Examples of positive and negative feedback in pedestrian route choice. (a) Different door usage for pedestrian flows moving in opposite directions. (b) The spontaneous path. (c) Unbalanced exit usage caused by positive feedback. (d,e) User equilibrium caused by negative feedback in route choice. (f,g) Negative feedback of congestion can convert an initial inhomogeneous spatial distribution of pedestrians into a balanced distribution of pedestrians across exits during egress. (d,e) Examples given by the authors. (a–c,f) and (g) are redraw from [51,55,56] and [57], respectively.

Figure 5.

Framework for pedestrian route choice based on the principles identified here. Decision stages are shown as grey boxes. Arrows indicate the direction in which pedestrians process information, and boxes with dashed boundaries includes details on the principles we identified for each decision stage.