Quantifying the interplay of emotions and rationality in herding: A game-theoretic simulation study

Abstract

In this paper, we apply game theory to analyze interplay between emotions and rationality, to reduce the effect of herding during evacuation. The simulation model developed for this work incorporates the social behavior of the crowd to ensure an improved evacuation. This model is simulated for four strategies, built upon both social and technological aspects of decision-making, with varied sets of the agents’ density and type being either rational or emotional. This work is evaluated both quantitatively and qualitatively using parameters such as simulation time, agents’ distribution across exits, exit utilization, and panic. Mixed results were achieved in general; however, the game variation allowing more than one exit change showed an improvement over both variations of the game allowing a single exit change.