Road climbing: A route choice heuristic

Bailenson, Shum, and Uttal (1998) showed that when people are asked to select from potential mutes on a map, their decision relied heavily on the initial attractiveness of the routes. Specifically, people preferred routes that were initially long and straight and headed in the general direction of the destination, even if that route was not the optimal (shortest) route. This paper extends this road climbing theory to route choice on maps of college campuses and to actual navigation around a college campus. Both experiments confirm that when given a choice among routes, people often resort to choosing the one that is most initially attractive. The road climbing model provides an explanation for both people's navigational decisions and also the path asymmetries that have been discovered by previous researchers studying route choice.