A pilot study into users' anxiety in the London Underground network environments (for the purpose of re-designing safety information)

The aim of the study is to present a novel approach to help relieve customers' anxiety experienced in the London Underground environments, through enabling provision of redesigned safety information. In this paper, anxiety as an emotional state experienced when facing potential threat was measured through a self-report anxiety scale. The findings showed some of the anxiety-inducing situations in the environments experienced by passengers, which include seeing other passengers' anti-social behaviour, overcrowding, noise and late-night travel. The situations demonstrate when passengers' information needs (the gap between the required state of knowledge to resolve a problem in a situation and the current state of knowledge) might arise. Sense of control has been stated as one of the important factors which may buffer anxious arousal. This paper therefore discusses a pilot study which measures anxious arousal and shows preliminary results from the study, and also makes some suggestions based on the results of the study and the relevant literature.