Flooding VS Storm Surge: Differences in Risk Perceptions and Intended Responses for Members of the Public

Storm surge inundation maps have been created to communicate risk for this deadly, though often underestimated and misunderstood, hurricane hazard. However, people often conflate storm surge inundation with flooding, as well as underestimating the severity of these warnings. To assess current understanding of and risk perceptions for storm surge and flooding hazards, we conducted an experiment in the 2022 Tropical Cyclone and Society Survey (TC22) with 2,082 U.S. adults that were recruited from an Internet panel that matches the characteristics of the U.S. population as estimated from the U.S. Census. Participants were randomly shown one of four storm alert messages, varying i) language about a surge warning, ii) language about a flood warning, iii) language about a surge emergency, and iv) language about a flood emergency, and then were asked to rate their risk perceptions and likelihood of response. This presentation will cover initial results from the survey experiment for this population, as well as making recommendations for future studies in this area.