2019 Volume 55 Issue 6 Pages 254-257
Questionnaire research on evacuation behavior in the 2018 flood disaster in western Japan was administered and self-estimation of motor performance was conducted with participants who encountered the 2018 flood. A step task and a pegboard task were used to evaluate motor performance, using the length of a stride in the step task and the time taken to complete the pegboard task as measures of motor performance. Discrepancies between actual motor performance and self-estimation of motor performance were measured so that as participants were overconfident about their own motor performance, the numerical value of the discrepancy increased; this was defined as the estimated stride length minus the actual stride length in the step task, and the actual time taken minus the estimated time taken to complete the pegboard task. Participants were separated into two groups based on their answers regarding evacuation intentions. The two groups were Y2, in which participants answered that they attempted to evacuate, and N2, in which participants answered that they did not. The discrepancies between actual and self-estimated performance for the two groups Y2 and N2 were compared. Results indicated that the motor performance estimation discrepancies for Y2 participants were smaller than the discrepancies for N2 participants, which suggests that people who underestimate their own motor performance may be more likely to evacuate when receiving information about a disaster.
