At the time of the evacuation drill

At the time of the evacuation drill, twenty-four students were present. Students were standing/sitting next to the tables doing their assignments individually, their locations are identified by the black circles in Fig. 1. While working in this space, students could see all exits from their current location. We do not know the used entrance of each student, but most students generally walk in via Exit A and C, as these exitsare the major exits of the workshop space. 3.1.2. Experiment setup The evacuation behaviour of the students working in the workshop was observed and recorded for two purposes. First and foremost, 360◦videos were needed as the material to create the evacuation scenario for VR experiment. Second, the students’ behaviour provided the benchmark for the comparison between the ‘real’ choice behaviour and the choice behaviour of the participants in the VR experiment. A combination of normal cameras and 360 cameras was used, namely two 360◦ cameras (i.e., Nikon KeyMission 360 Camera and Kodak Pixpro SP360 4 K Camera) and three normal cameras (i.e., CarCamDoo camera). Their positions in the workshop space are identified by icons in Fig. 1. Two of the three ‘normal’ cameras were placed at the second level of the workshop space, and the third one was placed on a balcony overseeing the workshop space (Fig. 2). These normal cameras had a higher and wider view, which ensured capturing the evacuation process of each individual. In order to identify every person clearly, the two 360 cameras were placed at the height of 1.8 m above the ground to capture the overall movement of the participants from an aerial view (Fig. 3). The setup of the field experiment ensured the behaviour of all students could easily be observed throughout the whole evacuation process without the observation being invaded or disturbing theirnatural behaviour. All behaviours of the pedestrians (e.g., pre-evacuation behaviour, exit choice) from 5 min before until just after the end of the evacuation drill was recorded and afterwards transcribed. No human intervention within the workshop space was required to activate the cameras.