Intrinsic group behaviour: Dependence of pedestrian dyad dynamics on principal social and personal features

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0187253
• Publication Date: 2017-11-02T15:14:55Z
• Authors: Francesco Zanlungo; Zeynep Yücel; Dražen Brščić; Takayuki Kanda; Norihiro Hagita
• Keywords: pedestrian dynamics; Adult; Male; Physics - Physics and Society; Science; FOS: Physical sciences; Walking; Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph); Young Adult; 0502 economics and business; Humans; Child; Social Behavior; Aged; Pedestrians; Probability; Q; 05 social sciences; R; Settore PHYS-06/A - Fisica per le scienze della vita, l'ambiente e i beni culturali; Middle Aged; group behavior; Group Processes; group behaviour; pedestrian dynamics, group behavior; Medicine; Female; Research Article

Being determined by human social behaviour, pedestrian group dynamics depends on "intrinsic properties" of the group such as the purpose of the pedestrians, their personal relation, their gender, age, and body size. In this work we quantitatively study the dynamical properties of pedestrian dyads by analysing a large data set of automatically tracked pedestrian trajectories in an unconstrained "ecological" setting (a shopping mall), whose relational group properties have been coded by three different human observers. We observed that females walk slower and closer than males, that workers walk faster, at a larger distance and more abreast than leisure oriented people, and that inter group relation has a strong effect on group structure, with couples walking very close and abreast, colleagues walking at a larger distance, and friends walking more abreast than family members. Pedestrian height (obtained automatically through our tracking system) influences velocity and abreast distance, both growing functions of the average group height. Results regarding pedestrian age show as expected that elderly people walk slowly, while active age adults walk at the maximum velocity. Groups with children have a strong tendency to walk in a non abreast formation, with a large distance (despite a low abreast distance). A cross-analysis of the interplay between these intrinsic features, taking in account also the effect of extrinsic crowd density, confirms these major effects but reveals also a richer structure. An interesting and unexpected result, for example, is that the velocity of groups with children {\it increases} with density, at least in the low-medium density range found under normal conditions in shopping malls. Children also appear to behave differently according to the gender of the parent.