Development and Preliminary Validation of an Immersive Virtual Reality Serious Game for Subway Fire Emergency Plan Training

ABSTRACT Emergency plan training is very important for subway staff to respond quickly in the event of a fire emergency in a subway station. Compared to traditional training methods, immersive virtual reality serious games (IVR SGs) are gradually attracting attention. However, there are few studies currently on the application of this training method to fire emergency plan training for subway staff. Therefore, an IVR SG for subway intern staff fire emergency plan training was designed and developed. Firstly, the prototype development process for this IVR SG was described, then the effectiveness of the developed IVR SG training was validated through being compared with traditional written text training from the perspectives of knowledge acquisition and retention, self‐efficacy improvement, and users' virtual reality (VR) experience. The results showed that the developed IVR SG was effective in terms of knowledge acquisition and self‐efficacy improvement, and was more effective than the traditional written text training in short‐term and long‐term training effectiveness. In addition, the VR experience that the developed IVR SG provided to users was also acceptable. The study can provide some insights for the prototype development and validation of effectiveness on IVR SG for the emergency plan training.