Citation

Pelé M, Bellut C, Debergue E, Gauvin C, Jeanneret A, Leclere T, Nicolas L, Pontier F, Zausa D, Sueur C. R. Soc. Open Sci. 2017; 4(2): e160739.

Affiliation

Département Ecologie, Physiologie et Ethologie, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Strasbourg, France; Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien, Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France; Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Inuyama, Japan.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Royal Society Publishing)

DOI

10.1098/rsos.160739

PMID

28386430

PMCID

PMC5367276

Abstract

Social information use is common in a wide range of group-living animals, notably in humans. The role it plays in decision-making could be a key to understanding how social groups make collective decisions. The observation of road-crossing behaviours in the presence of other individuals is an ideal means to study the influence of social information on decision-making. This study investigated the influence of culture on social information used by pedestrians in a potentially dangerous scenario, namely road crossing. We scored the collective crossing of pedestrians at four locations in Nagoya (Japan) and three locations in Strasbourg (France). French pedestrians cross against the lights much more often (41.9%) than Japanese ones (2.1%). Individuals deciding to cross the road were strongly influenced by the behaviour and the presence of other pedestrians, especially in Japan, where a stronger conformism was noted. However, Japanese pedestrians were half as likely to be influenced by social information as their French counterparts when crossing at the red light, as they were more respectful of rules. Men show riskier behaviour than women (40.6% versus 25.7% of rule-breaking, respectively), deciding quickly and setting off earlier than women. Further related studies could help target specific preventive, culture-specific solutions for pedestrian safety.

Language: en

Keywords

collective behaviour; culture; decision-making; risk; tradition; traffic injury