Communicating Hurricane Forecast Information to the Public: Understanding Responses to Risk Messages

Recent events such as Hurricanes Isaac and Sandy illustrate that forecasters and public officials still face major challenges in communicating the risk of an approaching hurricane to members of the public. To improve hurricane risk communication, it is important to understand how members of the public respond to forecast and warning messages. This includes understanding how people with different characteristics respond to hurricane risk messages differently. It also includes understanding the extent to which different hurricane messages help motivate people to take appropriate protective action, and why certain types of messages motivate action or not. To begin addressing these issues, we conducted a survey of members of the public who reside in areas of coastal south Florida that are at risk from hurricanes and storm surge. The survey presented a hypothetical hurricane situation and provided different respondents with different hurricane risk messages, based on modifications of the National Hurricane Center's track forecast cone product. Drawing on key risk constructs, we modified elements of the forecast message to differently convey the likelihood of being affected by the hurricane, the severity of the hurricane impacts, and the response efficacy, that is, the perceived effectiveness of the recommended response to the hurricane threat. Respondents were then asked questions to measure their intentions to take different protective actions (e.g., evacuate, shutter, withdraw cash from the bank) as well as questions related to their perceptions of the risk message. The survey also included questions on respondents' sociodemographics, worldviews, past hurricane experiences, and perceived barriers to evacuation. These data were analyzed to examine the effects of respondents' different characteristics, and the effects of different message elements, on their intended protective responses. This presentation will discuss results of our analysis, informed by risk theories (Cultural Theory of Risk, Extended Parallel Process Model) to explain the different responses.