Objectives

This study seeks to empirically measure risk perception and behavioral intention in rural and urban communities in the Southeastern United States. The aim is to examine individual responses to impending disasters based on media messages to determine behavioral intention.

Our focus is to develop, compare and test specific messaging surrounding hurricanes and other severe weather for comprehension and interpretation. From this information, the outcome and deliverables will be specific visuals and terminology for meteorologists and media personnel to employ when providing disaster preparedness information to consumers. This project can be transformative in its outcomes for disaster-preparedness planning.

One segment of the FEMA National Preparedness Goal includes an examination of public information and warning of imminent danger—this is the focus of the project. We will develop an experiment that tests how language choices, visual cues and media messages surrounding impending disasters (e.g., tornadoes and/or hurricanes) may impact an individual's risk perception and, thus, decision-making in the situation. In particular, we plan to examine the types of media messages most effective in influencing decision-making. For example, how do individuals react when seeing spaghetti-model weather graphics or real-time outdoor photos versus text-only messages? Which makes hem more likely to act, if either? These are important questions that this study seeks to answer.

In particular, the specific research questions addressed in this proposal include:

1. What visual elements on the news screens/medium are most effective in increasing an individual’s likelihood to take shelter from immediate or predicted danger?
2. How does community size and makeup contribute to the effectiveness of the message?

Methodology

I plan to visit two urban areas and two rural areas: Biloxi and Pearlington, Mississippi, and Mobile and Magnolia Springs, Alabama. To recruit participants, we plan to contact local churches in each area and request permission to recruit participants. Our planned method is to ask the churches for their willingness to email their congregation a link to our online survey to request participation or allow us to visit the church events to solicit participation. In return, we will provide $300 to each entity as a fee for recruitment services. The plan is to recruit 150 participants from each location. 

Participants will be randomly assigned to one of the three conditions, outlined below. It will all be completed in one sitting. Their general views on disaster preparedness and media use will first be assessed through a survey. The conditions will each contain two stimuli. In Round 1 of the experiment, participants will receive one of three conditions, where a hypothetical “Hurricane Farrah” is three days from landfall somewhere near them. Each of these stimuli will be placed within a 60-second “breaking” news story about a storm, with a certified broadcast meteorologist providing the voiceover. The content will be identical in these conditions with the only difference being the graphic employed. The conditions are:

1. A spaghetti-type hurricane tracking model
2. A hurricane cone of uncertainty or
3. A text-only statement from the National Weather Service 

In all conditions, the NWS statement will be read while the graphic is on the air. After responding to a battery of questions on their views about the news story and graphics, they will be asked to view a second round of broadcast news stories, this time about a hypothetical tornado on the ground near them. Each of these stimuli will be placed within a 60-second “breaking” news story about a storm, with a certified broadcast meteorologist providing the voiceover.

The conditions are:

1. Live-shot video of a tornado on the ground with a reporter nearby
2. Color radar graphic of areas where tornados have been seen
3. Text-only severe weather tornado announcement.

The same statement will be read in all three conditions.

Funds from this grant will permit us to recruit and incentivize participants to take part in our experiment, along with travel expenses.

The current project is an extension of work on a similar project under way, in which young adults in Alabama and Mississippi are being surveyed on their perceived level of preparedness for severe weather issues. That data will serve as a pilot test for this research. We plan to create the stimuli in Spring 2018, with data collection in summer 2018. We anticipate all data collection and analysis to be completed by the final deadline of November 30, 2018.

Rationale

Prior work in this area has suggested that a key element of predisaster planning includes understanding more about what individuals process and how they interpret warning messages. This study focuses specifically how media messages in severe weather are produced, disseminated and interpreted. During hurricanes, graphics were widely used which could contain all sorts of information at various stages of a given weather event. Specifically, in a study conducted by Landsea and Franklin (2013), media graphics were used to show the daily change in wind speed, hurricane moving route, prediction uncertainty due to instrumental difference (satellite, aircraft, etc.) as well as forecasting error in general. Similarly, Liu and Xie (2012) used examined how graphics were used to indicate forecasting errors, wind direction, sea-level pressure, and temperature change. Wu, Lindell, Prater and Samuelson (2014) implanted graphics in media messages to demonstrate hurricane area of influence as well as the likelihood of future impact. Others used graphics to document hurricane intensity change (Zahran, Tavani, & Weiler, 2013), casualties of all types and places (Moor & Dixon, 2012), as well as reveling the general shape of hurricane in a more vivid way (Ash, Schumann, & Bowser, 2014).

While these studies have examined the types of graphics used in media messages, they did not examine how those messages were disseminated to individuals or the level of comprehension by consumers or the effectiveness in influencing a resident’s likelihood to take action in severe weather. Advisories for hurricanes, including graphics, were primarily aimed for people in risky situations to understand this natural threat, and be conscious on when and how to take necessary actions in order to reduce loss of property or even lives (Mileti & Sorensen, 1987; Perry & Mushkatel, 1984). Additionally, previous research concluded that warnings are most effective when the information is transparent, specific to the actual case, and accurate as well as sufficient for decision-making (Mileti & O’Brien, 1992). If the disaster-affected public failed to understand the graphic properly or the graphic lack necessary information, then appropriate actions would be unlikely to be taken, increasing the possibility to exposure of natural danger thus threatening property as well as personal life (Sattler, Kaiser, & Hittner, 2000).

Researchers have found that most weather-related graphics in the United States give too much attention in describing the hurricane while failed to contain vital information for the public to make appropriate decisions. The lack of information tends to include the estimated landfall time, procedure and moment to take action, as well as other critical problems, such as inconsistency between sources and forecasting error (Sattler & Marshall, 2002; Radford, Senkbeil, & Rockman, 2013).

This study will attempt to address those issues, using an experimental design to test the effectiveness of television news graphics and video in helping to share urgent weather issues in both urban and rural settings. With rapidly changing media technology, a key outcome is to understand not only how messages are being received, but also how individuals are using media to understand their risk perception.

More specifically, this project follows up on a prior study funding by the Coastal Storm Awareness Program funded through the Sea Grant consortiums in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. That project, entitled “Measuring public responses to a surge of information: How individuals understand, react and respond to storm surge media messages,” was limited by their inability to create a video stimulus. My project will develop and test those different video stimuli, developing one of the unanswered questions from that study and learning more about their impact on consumers.

Further, this project extends their line of research into the rural south, which has significantly different barriers for individuals in making decisions during severe weather outbreaks. Individuals from both small and large communities—within different metropolitan areas—will be surveyed to examine their points of community when severe weather is imminent. Based on the geographic and population differences between the northeast U.S. and southern Alabama and Mississippi, it is likely that media reliance may be different between the areas.