Lu, X and Davis, S (2018) Priming effects on safety decisions in a virtual construction simulator. Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, 25(2), pp. 273-294. ISSN 0969-9988
Abstract
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of priming on people’s risk perceptions and safety decisions in a virtual construction simulator. Design/methodology/approach: Civil engineering students were recruited to interact with a virtual reality (VR) safety simulator. They were divided into four groups covering with and without sound and with and without priming factors. Data were collected on the risks that they perceived and the safety levels of their actions. Findings: It was found that obvious stimuli in a virtual environment with sound help people to recognise more hazards near the location of the stimuli. Sound is helpful in training simulations to create high levels of presence. However, priming factors are not suitable to be added to VR simulators for training purposes. Priming of safe choice results in people taking fewer risks in the VR simulator, but this does not carry over into other situations. Compared to priming effects, being “injured” in a training simulator with sound improves trainees' ability to make safe decisions. Originality/value: VR simulation is helpful in construction training because of its unique ability to give trainees exposure to dangerous situations without physical risk. However, the overloading the working memory of users is detrimental to the outcomes. Therefore, the optimum level of complexity in VR simulators should be further studied.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | construction management; decision making; priming; safety; training methods; virtual reality |
| Index terms: | virtual reality, presence, methodology, decision-making, exposure, complexity, virtual environment, risk perception |
| Subjects: | decision analysis, environmental hazards, systems engineering, research methods, public and environmental health, environmental science, virtual reality |
| Topics: | Risk Management, Sustainability, Health and Safety, Engineering Principles, Research Practice, Digital Applications |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCT |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here