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Modelling Hurricane Evacuation Decisions With Ethnographic Method
Abstract
This paper directly models individual and household hurricane evacuation behavior using ethnographic decision tree analysis. This approach uses a set of iterative processes to inductively derive a general decision model from specific individual decision models. To elicit the model described here, below the authors and several graduate students interviewed Miami residents who had been in South Florida during both Hurricanes Andrew in 1992 and Erin in 1995. The resulting model of hurricane evacuation decision processes was then tested with interview data collected from a separate random sample of 954 South Florida residents drawn from areas that were evacuation zones and areas immediately adjacent to them at the time of Hurricane Andrew. The model captures the complexity and messiness of real-life decision-making by including criteria-showing how people are constrained by their perceptions of the hurricane, the safety features of their homes, the time they have available to prepare for the hurricane, their age, and the reactions of other family members who are also deciding whether or not to evacuate. By showing the richness of the decision process as well as its messiness, results taken from this model can better inform emergency managers who need to know how people will react to the approach of a hurricane.
... However, which factors are most influential varies among studies. This variation arises in part because studies examine a variety of real and hypothetical hurricane situations, and people vary in their hurricane-related experiences, vulnerabilities, capacities, and responses to risks [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] . In addition, different studies include different sets of possible influences on evacuations and operationalize variables differently. ...
... While similar to hurricane evacuation in some respects, the types of decision contexts discussed above involve different considerations and dynamics than near-term decisions for approaching hazards 42,43 . A number of hurricane studies have examined risk perceptions, with most finding that they are related to people's evacuation decisions [4][5][6][7][8]16,44,45 . This has important practical implications because risk perceptions can be influenced by risk communication, which forecasters and public officials can shape. ...
... Supporting this idea, of the six general hurricane-related perceptions, preparations, and experiences investigated here, evacuation for Hurricane Sandy has the strongest correlation with response efficacy (Table 6), and it is the strongest predictor of evacuation intentions (Model 7 in Table 4; see also ref. 12). This is also consistent with other research, which finds that prior hurricane evacuation is a predictor of future evacuation, or more generally, that some people tend to be "evacuators" who believe in general that evacuation is likely to reduce harm, while others are "non-evacuators" who will not evacuate in most circumstances 6,8,58,[71][72][73] . Unfortunately, we cannot fully investigate this hypothesis using these data, because the survey did not measure respondents' general evacuation-related response efficacy. ...
Risk theories and empirical research indicate that a variety of factors can influence people’s protective decisions for natural hazards. Using data from an online survey that presented coastal U.S. residents with a hypothetical hurricane scenario, this study investigates the relative importance of cognitive risk perceptions, negative affect, efficacy beliefs, and other factors in explaining people’s anticipated evacuation decisions. The analysis finds that multiple factors, including individual and household characteristics, previous experiences, cognitive and affective risk perceptions, and efficacy beliefs, can help predict hurricane evacuation intentions. However, the largest amount of variance in survey participants’ evacuation intentions is explained by their evacuation-related response efficacy (coping appraisals) and their perceived likelihood of getting hurt if they stay home during the storm. Additional analysis explores how risk perceptions and efficacy beliefs interact to influence people’s responses to risk information. Although further investigation in additional situations is needed, these results suggest that persuading people at high risk that evacuating is likely to reduce harm can serve as an important risk communication lever for motivating hurricane evacuation.
... The only barrier that significantly affected the time of warning receipt was sleep-that of the participant as well as their social network. This supports the hypothesis of the heavy dependence on social networks for information gathering in these groups who are more likely to trust and confirm risk with friends and family (Gladwin, Gladwin, and Peacock 2001;Donner, Havidan, and Walter 2012;M. D. Smith et al. 2023). ...
... Housing serves as a risk indicator for both households and emergency planners. For instance, occupants of multiunit residences tend to evacuate more frequently than those in single-family homes (Gladwin et al. 2001). Mobile homeowners also show higher evacuation rates compared to other housing types, leading to targeted evacuation messaging for this demographic (Baker 1991). ...
The frequent climatic extreme events in Bangladesh’s coastal region significantly affected the local agricultural system. To
meet the growing food demand, coastal regions must adopt climate-smart agricultural practices to sustain food production.
This study examines the farmers’ behavioral determinants for adopting climate-smart agricultural practices based on floating
farming. Using a structured questionnaire, we surveyed 341 farm households in climate change-affected wetland areas of
southern coastal Bangladesh. We used an Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR) model by analyzing data to estimate the
effect of adopting floating farming as an adaptation strategy on farm households’ profitability. Our findings suggest that 79%
of sampled farm households used floating farming to adapt to extreme climatic events like waterlogging, hazard effects, and
erratic rainfall. Results exhibit that age, education, religion, cultivation season, hazard effects, training, previous knowledge
of floating farming, and technical support were the determinants of adopting floating farming. Adopting farm households had
a 60% higher farm profit than non-adopters, and cooperative membership, technical, credit, and training positively affected
farm profits. Estimates from the ESR model show that the adoption of floating farming resulted in higher profitability when
compared with the counterfactual situation. Analysis reveals that adopters of floating farming experienced a significant gain
of US 37.69/decimal). In contrast, non-adopters would have
gained US$ 1.28/decimal if they had adopted floating farming, indicating the missed opportunity for enhanced profitability.
These findings highlight the potential of floating farming as an effective climate-smart adaptation strategy in wetland areas,
emphasizing the need for targeted policies and support mechanisms to promote its wider adoption and enhance farmers'
resilience to climate change impacts.
... Housing serves as a risk indicator for both households and emergency planners. For instance, occupants of multiunit residences tend to evacuate more frequently than those in single-family homes (Gladwin et al. 2001). Mobile homeowners also show higher evacuation rates compared to other housing types, leading to targeted evacuation messaging for this demographic (Baker 1991). ...
Due to its unique location, Bangladesh often faces devastating hydroclimatic shocks such as floods and cyclones. In the recent past, three major cyclones (Sidr in 2007, Aila in 2009, and Komen in 2015) claimed 3800 lives and damaged hundreds of thousands of houses with billions of dollars in property damages. In this paper, we focus on understanding people's evacuation behaviors in the face of approaching cyclones using survey data collected through face-to-face interviews with residents living in the coastal areas of Bangladesh. Through various statistical models, including probit, panel probit, bivariate probit, and multinomial logit models, we have explored the determinants of both past and future evacuation decisions, as well as the choice of evacuation destinations. Our findings reveal consistent patterns across different cyclone events, highlighting the significant roles played by warning time, proximity to the coast, property loss, shelter accessibility, housing structure, literacy, past evacuation experiences, and demographic factors such as age, gender, and employment status. Additionally, the analysis of evacuation destinations uncovers nuanced insights into the preferences and challenges faced by evacuees, including the need for improving shelter accessibility. With rising vulnerabilities in coastal areas in Bangladesh and worldwide, identifying what drives households' evacuation decisions and their destination choices can provide useful inputs for evacuation planning and effective disaster management.
A hurricane is highly dynamic, evolving over minutes, hours, and days. It can change in intensity, track, and translational speed, all of which can change the hazards from wind, tornado, storm surge, and inland flooding. A sophisticated meteorological observation network exists to observe hurricanes over time, to monitor, understand, and forecast their evolution. It is reasonable to think that people also are dynamic, evolving in response to evolving hurricane risks. Yet, very little is known about how people perceive and respond to hurricane risks over time because developing such knowledge requires collecting social science observational data repeatedly from the same set of individuals in real-time during a real-world hurricane event. We describe the methodology we developed and implemented to collect such longitudinal, perishable social science observations for three hurricane events: Laura and Marco in 2020, Henri in 2021, and Ian in 2022. With these data, we examined whether, when, and how people’s amount of forecast information obtained and risk perceptions changed during each of these events. A key finding is that people were dynamic, updating their perceptions and behaviors over time as the hurricanes evolved rather than anchoring on early knowledge and assessments. Moreover, the ways people were dynamic varied based on their predicted exposure to different hurricane hazards and across the hurricane events. Based on the novel insights this research yields, we advocate scaling and expanding this methodology to collect such data for additional hurricanes and for different high-impact and extreme weather hazards.
Using multiple hurricane surveys collected from different areas in the U.S., this study estimates how much distance and how much time were traveled by evacuees to reach safer destinations during a hurricane event. Regression results indicate that flood risk, respondents’ age, income, and education levels are correlated with both the distance and travel time of hurricane evacuation trips. Moreover, to gain deeper insights, we estimated the price and income elasticities of hurricane evacuation trip characteristics. The estimated elasticities of travel distance reveal that travel distance is a necessary and ordinary good, implying that safety is essential and less responsive to price changes. In addition, the estimated elasticities of travel time suggest that travel time is an inferior good, indicating that as income goes up, people tend to spend less time traveling for evacuation. This finding provides logistic implications for emergency management agencies to analyze the evacuation travel demand and ensure safety in vulnerable communities.
This paper develops a single stage theoretical model that examines the impact of citizen ethnicity on evacuation warning compliance. Three ethnic groups are examined: blacks, whites, and Mexican-Americans. Other independent variables in the model include risk perception, possession of an adaptive plan, warning content, warning confirmation, income, and warning source credibility. The model is tested on data from a flood and a hazardous materials incident. In both events, it was found that respondent ethnicity and income had small and statistically nonsignificant effects upon warning compliance. Perceived risk was the best predictor of compliance in each data set. Ethnic group differences were detected in terms of the specific sources identified as most credible and in terms of the first source contacted for warning confirmation.
Since the early 1980s, development experts and donor agencies have agreed on the importance of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) aimed at ‘getting prices right‘. Adoption of reforms were made preconditions for new loans or grants in many sub‐Saharan African countries. In both Malawi and Cameroon, one such required reform was government's eliminating fertilizer subsidies to the small farm sector, previously used to increase the profitability of intensive agriculture while keeping food prices artificially low. The aim of this paper is to review fertilizer subsidy removal programs for their impact on farmers, who in sub‐Saharan Africa are women. In theory, SAP programs should benefit women producers, because much emphasis is placed on renewing agricultural production and aligning farmgate prices with world prices. But in practice, will they benefit? Are SAPs gender‐neutral and affect men and women equally, or merely gender‐blind?
This series is dedicated to serving the growing community of scholars and practitioners concerned with the principles and applications of environ mental management. Each volume is a thorough treatment of a specific topic of importance for proper management practices. A fundamental ob jective of these books is to help the reader discern and implement man's stewardship of our environment and the world's renewable resources. For we must strive to understand the relationship between man and nature, act to bring harmony to it, and nurture an environment that is both stable and productive. These objectives have often eluded us because the pursuit of other in dividual and societal goals has diverted us from a course of living in balance with the environment. At times, therefore, the environmental manager may have to exert restrictive control, which is usually best applied to man, not nature. Attempts to alter or harness nature have often failed or backfired, as exemplified by the results of imprudent use of herbicides, fertilizers, water, and other agents. Each book in this series will shed light on the fundamental and applied aspects of environmental management. It is hoped that each will help solve a practical and serious environmental problem. Robert S. DeSanto East Lyme, Connecticut Acknowledgments Compilation of the materials reviewed in this inventory was facilitated greatly by several staff members of the Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware (formerly at The Ohio State University) and the Natural Haz ards Research and Applications Information Center, University of Colorado.
A common theme in the literature on evacuation compliance is the result of largely social psychological perceptions of risk formed prior to taking the protective action. From this perspective, evacuation is a function of warning recipients corning to define themselves as in danger and believing that fleeing the immediate environment wilt reduce that danger. This paper explores the social psychological and social structural processes that result in such perceptions. In particular, attention is given to identifying perceptions that motivate evacuation, factors that direct perceptual outcomes and the ways in which motivation and perception are translated into action.
Researchers have conducted sample surveys following at least twelve hurricanes from 1961 through 1989 in almost every state from Texas through Massachutts. The resulting database is larger than that for any other hazard, and many generalizations are feasible concerning factors accounting for variation in response to hurricane threats.
Risk area and actions by public officials are the most important variables affecting public response. When public officials are aggressive in issuing evacuation notices and disseminate the messages effectively. over 90 percent of the residents of high-risk barrier islands and open coasts evacuate. People hearing, or believing they hear, official evacuation advisories or orders are more than twice as likely to leave in most locations. A greater percentage of mobile home dwellers evacuate than occupants of other housing, especially in modelate-risk and low-risk areas. General knowledge about hurricanes and hurricane safety is weakly related or unrelated to evacuation, but belief that one's own home is subject to flooding is strongly associated with whether the occupant leaves. Length of residence in hurricane prone areas and hurricane experience are not good predictors of response. The great majority of people who evacuate unnecessarily in one hurricane will still leave in future threats.
The issue of planning for evacuations of nursing homes and related health care facilities concerns both emergency planners and disaster researchers who cite the lack of empirical data on the problems of special populations during emergency evacuations. Although most evacuations of such facilities are carried out successfully, the effectiveness of an evacuation (as measured by time to evacuate) is limited by certain constraints. This study examines selected organizational characteristics of nursing homes and related health care facilities which experienced either a partial or complete evacuation of their facilities. Among the factors affecting facility evacuations are resources, the type and number of clientele, and community characteristics such as population density. Although the issues are related to general evacuation concerns, the findings suggest that individuals within specialized populations are unlike other victims of disaster with particular needs that require different management strategies to expedite an evacuation efficiently.
Every year thousands of people temporarily relocate prior to the threat of major disasters. Social science research has been applied to enhance the effectiveness of multiorganizational warning systems. Much remains unknown, however. This paper presents findings from the first major study of disaster evacuation planning and decision making behavior by business executives responsible far tourist oriented firms. Two questions are explored: (1) What is the extent of disaster evacuation planning? and (2) What factors account for the variation in these planning initiatives? Data were collected in three communities with large tourist industries through interviews with 65 owners or managers of tourist oriented firms. While a limited degree of planning has occurred, the overall portrait indicated serious shortfalls. Although individual and community characteristics were relevant, organizational qualities accounted for most of the variation in disaster evacuation planning.