The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 1 - 70

Michael Leytem * Emily Stark

others if the norm is not to evacuate immediately. This may be exacerbated by the degree
individuals know each other and an internal
pressure to ﬁt in with a group of friends.
By bringing awareness to the impact of
this psychological phenomenon on behavior
during emergency situations, and the devastating impact inaction could bring, building ofﬁcials and administrators could create
a campaign for students to act promptly and
follow evacuation procedures when making
emergency decisions. A slogan such as "Save
Yourself, Save Others" or "If You Lead, They

This potential is further
heightened if the failure of some
residents to respond to ﬁre
alarms leads others to return to
the building to evacuate them.

the alarm. In 2013, Congress ofﬁcially designated September as "Campus Fire Safety
Month" to promote ﬁre safety educational
programs, evaluate ﬁre safety on and off
campus, and enforce new or current ﬁre codes
(Koebele, 2014). Campuses could use this
month as an opportunity to focus particularly
on ﬁre safety programming when students are
returning to school, to instill an appreciation
for and understanding of correct behaviors in
response to an alarm.
Finally, some researchers (Harrington &
Walker, 2009) have effectively incorporated
computer training and simulations to educate
target populations about ﬁre exits and evacuation behaviors; extending this to a college
student population could work to inform them
about proper evacuation procedures without
exposing them to numerous false alarms.
Perhaps virtual simulations could also be used
in research to create an emergency setting that
would provide a more realistic experiment
then a self-report measurement.

Conclusions and Future Research

Will Follow" could be displayed in residence
halls as reminder not to fall victim to pluralistic ignorance. Incentivizing behaviors may also
be effective; a ﬂoor with the highest percentage
of evacuation per inhabitants may receive an
incentive such as free admission to an upcoming campus event. Housing personnel should
make clear rules about mandatory evacuations
in the case of ﬁre alarms, and associated penalties for failing to evacuate, which could also
motivate students who may otherwise ignore

70

In sum, future research should continue to
investigate the role social inﬂuence has on
residence hall inhabitants in order to build a
knowledge base of the attitudes and behaviors
of college students in response to ﬁre alarms.
College housing personnel should work with
researchers to assess the impact of these programs, increasing our understanding of the
impact of social inﬂuence in this domain and
how to reliably improve evacuation rates. New
methods such as virtual simulations should
continue to be explored as an effective way to
measure ﬁre alarm decisions. It may also be
beneﬁcial to collect interview data from stu-

THE JOURNAL OF COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY STUDENT HOUSING
The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 1
