Passengers’ safety awareness and perception of wayfinding tools in a Ro-Ro passenger ship during an emergency evacuation

Abstract Wayfinding tools are important parts of the emergency evacuation identification system, which can improve passengers’ understanding of the evacuation process, and guide people to evacuate quickly. However, there are few systematic studies on passengers' safety awareness and perception of wayfinding tools and evacuation procedures in case of passenger ship emergencies. This paper aims to demonstrate the current levels and status of ship passenger’s safety awareness, the perception of emergency wayfinding tools and the demographic differences regarding safety awareness and perception. These objectives are achieved by examining the characteristics of passengers of a vessel transport route between Yantai and Dalian through the application of questionnaires and statistical analysis techniques. Questionnaire responses of 1,373 passengers indicated that a number of passengers had seen the ship emergency evacuation plan (56.8%), exit signs (56%), and emergency public address (PA) (53.5%). However, 32.2% did not fully understand or comprehend the content and availability of the vessel’s emergency evacuation plan, 31.5% did not understand the exit signs and 32.9% did not understand the emergency PA. The obtained ordered logistic regression results show that there are demographic differences in safety awareness, perception of wayfinding tools among passengers.