Drivers of natural disaster risk-reduction actions and their temporal dynamics: Insights from surveys during an imminent hurricane threat and its aftermath

W. J.Wouter Botzen*, Jantsje M. Mol, Peter J. Robinson, Jeffrey Czajkowski

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

To improve preparedness for natural disasters, it is imperative to understand the factors that enable individual risk-reduction actions. This study offers such insights using innovative real-time (N = 871) and repeated (N = 255) surveys of a sample of coastal residents in Florida regarding flood preparations and their drivers during an imminent threat posed by Hurricane Dorian and its aftermath. Compared with commonly employed cross-sectional surveys, our methodology better represents relationships between preparedness actions undertaken during the disaster threat and their drivers derived from an extended version of Protection Motivation Theory (PMT). The repeated survey allows for examining temporal dynamics in these drivers. Our results confirm the importance of coping appraisals and show that risk perceptions relate more strongly to emergency protection decisions made during the period of the disaster threat than to decisions made well before. Moreover, we find that several personal characteristics that we add to the standard PMT framework significantly relate to undertaking preparedness actions, especially locus of control and social norms. Significant changes in key explanatory variables occur following the disaster threat, including a decline in risk perception, a potential learning effect in coping appraisals, and a decline in risk aversion. Our results confirm the advantage of the real-time and repeated survey approach in understanding both short- and long-term disaster preparedness actions.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2448-2462
JournalRisk Analysis
Volume44
Issue number10
DOIs
Publication statusAccepted/In press - 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors. Risk Analysis published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Risk Analysis.

Funding

This research was funded by the State of Florida Division of Emergency Management, by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) VIDI (452.14.005) grant, and the EU ERC INSUREADAPT grant no. 101086783.

FundersFunder number
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek452.14.005
EU ERC101086783

    Keywords

    • flood
    • hurricane
    • individual decision making
    • protection
    • risk aversion
    • risk perception

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