JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – If a warning said you have a high probability of dying in a storm would you pay attention? A social science survey asked this question and found very few were swayed.
When hurricanes like Irma or Sandy threaten the coast, warning messages assume people will take precautions. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, even with messages that include life-threatening scary language.
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Rebecca Morss at the National Center for Atmospheric Research investigated various types of weather risk messages to see which ones were effective.
Three test messages ranged from storm specific hazardous aspects to societal impacts of those hazards and fear-based impact wording to motivate evacuation among those at highest risk.
The survey took a hypothetical hurricane scenario and interviewed 1,716 respondents who living through Hurricane Sandy which resulted in 71 direct deaths in the United States.
It turned out only a small percentage were willing to evacuate, under the fear-based approach such as “If you stay, you will die,” which has been used in the past by the National Weather Service.
Interestingly, there were no significantly different effects of the hazard-based messages, which tested communicating about general or storm-surge flooding from the hurricane in addition to strong winds.
While message variations didn’t have a large influence on evacuations, past storm experiences and the emotional distress felt after Sandy did change behavior.
Effective hazardous weather messages for future storms may need to incorporate historical impacts to influence people’s risk interpretations and protective decisions.