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The Protective Action Decision Model: Theoretical Modifications and Additional Evidence

Risk Analysis

June 2011
32(4):616-32

DOI:10.1111/j.1539-6924.2011.01647.x

Source
PubMed

Authors:

Michael K Lindell

Texas A&M University

Ronald W. Perry

Arizona State University

The Protective Action Decision Model (PADM) is a multistage model that is based on findings from research on people's responses to environmental hazards and disasters. The PADM integrates the processing of information derived from social and environmental cues with messages that social sources transmit through communication channels to those at risk. The PADM identifies three critical predecision processes (reception, attention, and comprehension of warnings or exposure, attention, and interpretation of environmental/social cues)--that precede all further processing. The revised model identifies three core perceptions--threat perceptions, protective action perceptions, and stakeholder perceptions--that form the basis for decisions about how to respond to an imminent or long-term threat. The outcome of the protective action decision-making process, together with situational facilitators and impediments, produces a behavioral response. In addition to describing the revised model and the research on which it is based, this article describes three applications (development of risk communication programs, evacuation modeling, and adoption of long-term hazard adjustments) and identifies some of the research needed to address unresolved issues.

Information flow in the PADM.Source: Adapted from Lindell & Perry (2004).

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Risk Analysis, Vol. 32, No. 4, 2012 DOI: 10.1111/j.1539-6924.2011.01647.x

The Protective Action Decision Model: Theoretical

Modiﬁcations and Additional Evidence

Michael K. Lindell1,∗and Ronald W. Perry2

The Protective Action Decision Model (PADM) is a multistage model that is based on ﬁnd-

ings from research on people’s responses to environmental hazards and disasters. The PADM

integrates the processing of information derived from social and environmental cues with

messages that social sources transmit through communication channels to those at risk. The

PADM identiﬁes three critical predecision processes (reception, attention, and comprehen-

sion of warnings or exposure, attention, and interpretation of environmental/social cues)—

that precede all further processing. The revised model identiﬁes three core perceptions—

threat perceptions, protective action perceptions, and stakeholder perceptions—that form the

basis for decisions about how to respond to an imminent or long-term threat. The outcome

of the protective action decision-making process, together with situational facilitators and

impediments, produces a behavioral response. In addition to describing the revised model

and the research on which it is based, this article describes three applications (development

of risk communication programs, evacuation modeling, and adoption of long-term hazard

adjustments) and identiﬁes some of the research needed to address unresolved issues.

KEY WORDS: Protective action decisions; protective action perception; risk perception

1. INTRODUCTION

Researchers have long been interested in ex-

plaining the process by which people respond to

environmental cues or socially transmitted warn-

ings about environmental hazards and disasters.(1−10)

Findings from this research on environmental haz-

ards and disasters are compatible with those from

theories on social inﬂuence, persuasion, behav-

ioral decision making, attitude-behavior relation-

ships, protective action, and innovation processes in

identifying useful guidance on ways in which risk

1Texas A&M University, Hazard Reduction & Recovery Center,

College Station, TX, USA.

2Arizona State University, School of Public Affairs, Phoenix AZ,

USA.

∗Address correspondence to Michael K. Lindell, Texas A&M Uni-

versity, Hazard Reduction & Recovery Center, College Station,

TX 77843-3137, USA; mlindell@tamu.edu.

communication can inﬂuence immediate disaster re-

sponse and long-term hazard adjustments. The latter

are deﬁned, following Burton, Kates, and White,(11)

as “those actions that intentionally or unintentionally

reduce risk from extreme events in the natural en-

vironment” (Ref. 12 p. 328). The relevant elements

of these complementary approaches have been in-

tegrated to produce a Protective Action Decision

Model (PADM) of the factors that inﬂuence indi-

viduals’ adoption of protective actions.(5,13) More re-

cently, additional evidence has been collected that

supports some of the PADM’s propositions and

has required reconsideration of others. Thus, the

purpose of this article is to describe an updated ver-

sion of the PADM, describe three applications (de-

velopment of risk communication programs, evacu-

ation modeling, and adoption of long-term hazard

adjustments), and identify some of the research

needed to address unresolved issues. This section will

616 0272-4332/12/0100-0616$22.00/1 C

2011 Society for Risk Analysis

The Protective Action Decision Model 617

Fig. 1. Information ﬂow in the PADM.

Source: Adapted from Lindell & Perry (2004).

provide a brief overview of the model, which will be

followed by more detailed discussion of its compo-

nents in Sections 2–5. Section 6 will provide a theo-

retical assessment of the PADM and Section 7 will

describe its applications in three areas (development

of risk communication programs, evacuation model-

ing, and adoption of long-term hazard adjustments).

The ﬁndings of studies on individual response

to environmental hazards and disasters can be dia-

grammed in a ﬂow chart that provides a graphic rep-

resentation of the model (see Fig. 1). The process of

protective action decision making begins with envi-

ronmental cues, social cues, and warnings. Environ-

mental cues are sights, smells, or sounds that sig-

nal the onset of a threat whereas social cues arise

from observations of others’ behavior. Warnings are

messages that are transmitted from a source via a

channel to a receiver, resulting in effects that de-

pend on receivers’ characteristics. The relevant ef-

fects are changes in receivers’ beliefs and behaviors,

whereas receivers’ characteristics include their phys-

ical (e.g., strength), psychomotor (e.g., vision and

hearing), and cognitive (e.g., primary and secondary

languages as well as their mental models/schemas)

abilities as well as their economic (money and ve-

hicles) and social (friends, relatives, neighbors, and

co-workers) resources.

Environmental cues, social cues, and socially

transmitted warnings initiate a series of predecisional

processes that, in turn, elicit core perceptions of the

environmental threat, alternative protective actions,

and relevant stakeholders. These perceptions pro-

vide the basis for protective action decision making,

the outcome of which combines with situational facil-

itators and impediments to produce a behavioral re-

sponse. In general, the response can be characterized

as information search, protective response (problem-

focused coping), or emotion focused coping. In many

cases, there is a feedback loop as additional environ-

mental or social cues are observed or warnings are

received. The dominant tendency is for such informa-

tion to prompt protective action decision making, but

information seeking occurs when there is uncertainty

at a given stage in the protective action decision-

making process. Once the uncertainty is resolved,

processing proceeds to the next stage in the process.

The stages in the PADM characterize the way

people “typically” make decisions about adopting

actions to protect against environmental hazards.

These stages are sequential, as are those within the

information-seeking process. However, few people

are likely to follow every step in the model in the

exact sequence listed in Fig. 1. For example, an ex-

tremely credible (or powerful) source might obtain

immediate and unquestioning compliance with a di-

rective to evacuate an area at risk—even if there

were no explanation why evacuation was necessary

or what alternative protective actions were feasi-

ble.(14) The important lesson is that—unless warn-

ing sources have an extreme amount of credibility or

they have substantial power to compel compliance—

the more stages in the PADM they neglect, the more

618 Lindell and Perry

ambiguity there is likely to be for message recipients.

In turn, greater ambiguity is likely to cause warning

recipients to spend more time in seeking and pro-

cessing information rather than preparing for and im-

plementing protective action.(9,15) Indeed, ambiguity

can initiate a repetitive cycle of information process-

ing and information seeking that persists until it is

too late to complete a protective action before haz-

ard onset.

2. ENVIRONMENTAL AND

SOCIAL CONTEXT

The physical environmental component com-

prises the geophysical, meteorological, hydrological,

or technological processes that generate a hazard and

transport it to the locations where people are ex-

posed (see Ref. 16, chapter 5, for further discussion).

These processes generate hazards that vary in the

speed of onset, and magnitude, scope, and duration

of their impacts. One important hazard character-

istic that is often quite relevant for people’s emer-

gency response is the availability of environmental

cues such as sights and sounds that indicate hazard

onset. In tornadoes, for example, the sight of a funnel

cloud and a roar “like a freight train” (a common de-

scription by tornado victims) provide unmistakable

indications of imminent threat. In other cases, such

as the recession of coastal waters before a tsunami,

the cues are much more ambiguous and likely to be

misinterpreted. Still other hazards, such as ionizing

radiation and some toxic chemicals, provide no envi-

ronmental cues whatsoever.

The transmission of social information is based

upon the classic six-component communication

model of source-channel-message-receiver-effect-

feedback.(17−21) Sources in the social context consist

of other people who may transmit information about

hazards and protective actions, as well as providing

assistance to reduce the hazard or providing material

resources that assist protective response. For exam-

ple, authorities, news media, and peers (i.e., friends,

relatives, neighbors, and co-workers) can provide in-

formation about environmental threats and alterna-

tive protective actions. Moreover, emergency man-

agers can dispatch city and school buses to evacuate

those who lack their own means of transportation.

They can also provide public shelters to those who

lack the money needed to stay in commercial facili-

ties or lack nearby friends or relatives with whom to

stay.

One crucial aspect of the social context is the

network of organizations and individuals that com-

prise the warning network.(6,22) An original source

can transmit a message by means of a broadcast pro-

cess directly to ultimate receivers (e.g., households)

and also by means of a diffusion process through in-

termediate sources who, in turn, relay messages to

ultimate receivers.(23) These ultimate receivers might

also transmit messages to each other, thus resulting

in some people receiving multiple warnings, others

receiving only a single warning, and some people re-

ceiving no warnings. The nature of the warning net-

work has a signiﬁcant impact on protective action de-

cision making because multiple sources often deliver

conﬂicting messages that require searching for addi-

tional information to resolve the confusion.

The warning network can communicate informa-

tion through a variety of different types of channels.

These include print (newspapers, magazines, and

brochures), electronic (commercial radio and televi-

sion, telephone, route alert (broadcast from a moving

vehicle), tone alert radio, siren, and Internet), and

face-to-face (dyadic conversation or group presenta-

tion). These channels differ in characteristics such as

dissemination rate and precision, penetration of nor-

mal activities, message speciﬁcity/distortion, sender

and receiver requirements for specialized equipment,

and feedback/receipt veriﬁcation (see Ref. 5, chapter

4, for a detailed discussion). Each channel has advan-

tages and disadvantages, with channels that provide

the fastest dissemination often providing the least in-

formation (e.g., mechanical sirens). Moreover, peo-

ple differ in their channel access and preferences.

For example, tornado warnings broadcast over an

English-language radio station missed the population

of Saragosa, Texas that routinely listened to Spanish-

language stations.(24) In addition to the ofﬁcial warn-

ing systems, however, peers typically relay informa-

tion through informal warning systems. Even when

peers do not explicitly transmit warning messages,

their behavior—especially obvious preparations for

evacuation—can serve as social cues for protective

action.(25)

3. PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSES

Psychological processes are deﬁned by three sets

of activities—(i) predecisional processes; (ii) core

perceptions of the environmental threat, alterna-

tive protective actions, and social stakeholders; and

(iii) protective action decision making. The three

predecisional processes of exposure (whether people

The Protective Action Decision Model 619

receive information), attention (whether they heed

it), and comprehension (whether they understand

it) are largely automatic processes that take place

outside of conscious processing.(26) The three core

perceptual objects—environmental threats, alterna-

tive protective actions, and societal stakeholders—

can elicit either automatic or reﬂective judgments,

depending on the degree to which an individual

has schemas that provide readily accessible and co-

herent beliefs about those objects. When some-

one has a schema—a generic knowledge struc-

ture deﬁned by instances, attributes that differen-

tiate these instances, and interrelationships among

the attributes—beliefs about objects encompassed by

that schema are rapidly accessed to produce an over-

all judgment that is congruent with the available in-

formation about the situation. Finally, contrary to

widespread belief, panic rarely occurs.(27) Instead,

protective action decision making is often a reﬂective

process that assesses the available information about

the threat, alternative protective actions, and social

stakeholders to choose a behavioral response. The

research literature suggests that inappropriate disas-

ter responses are more frequently due to inadequate

information than to defective cognitive processing.

3.1. Predecisional Processes

Regardless of whether information comes from

environmental cues or social warnings, three pre-

decisional processes are necessary to produce a

protective response. Information from the physical

environment will not lead to the initiation of appro-

priate protective actions unless people are exposed

to, heed, and accurately interpret the environmen-

tal cues. Similarly, information from the social envi-

ronment will not lead to the initiation of appropri-

ate protective actions unless people receive, heed,

and comprehend the socially transmitted informa-

tion. Whether or not people heed the available infor-

mation is determined by their expectations, compet-

ing attention demands, and the intrusiveness of the

information.(26) These processes are known to be af-

fected by the warning recipient’s age,(28) but the ef-

fects of other demographic characteristics have not

been reported.

In the case of warnings, people must ﬁrst receive

information from another person through a warn-

ing channel and attend to this information. Accord-

ingly, the characteristics of the warning channel itself

can have a signiﬁcant impact on people’s reception

and attention to warning message content. For exam-

ple, in many places along the Oregon coast, moun-

tains prevent people from receiving signals from

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Adminis-

tration Weather Radio transmitters.(29) Even when a

warning has been received and heeded, some people

will fail to comprehend the available information—

what others called “hearing and understanding.”(30)

The comprehension of warning messages depends

upon whether the message is conveyed in words

they understand. As the Saragossa tornado indicated,

warnings disseminated in English are unlikely to

be understood by those who understand only Span-

ish.(24) In addition, however, comprehension also af-

fected by more subtle factors. A warning message

cannot be comprehended if it uses esoteric terms

that have no meaning for those at risk. For example,

phrases such as “hypocenter” (earthquake), “Safﬁr-

Simpson Category” (hurricane), “oxidizer” (chem-

ical), and “millirem” (radiological) are specialized

terms that will not be understood by all who hear

them.

3.2. Perceptions of Threats, Protective Actions,

and Stakeholders

Unlike comprehension, which provides the lit-

eral meaning of the words in a warning message, per-

ceptions of the threat, alternative protective actions,

and stakeholders involve broader associations that

are integral parts of the schemas or mental models(31)

within which the threat, protective actions, and stake-

holders are embedded. It should be quite obvious

that people will differ from each other in the com-

prehensiveness of their schemas about these objects.

That is, some people will have highly differentiated

schemas whereas others have poorly differentiated

schemas about an object.

3.2.1. Perceptions of Environmental Threats

The essential attributes of people’s perceptions

of environmental threats are generally considered

to be probability and consequences, but some well-

known approaches to perceived risk include factors

such as dread and unknown risks.(32) These addi-

tional dimensions of perceived risk appear to be

useful in explaining people’s responses to a broad

range of technologies and societal activities, but it

is not completely obvious how they are related to

the perception of, and response to, imminent threats

from environmental hazards.(33) Research on haz-

ards and disasters has emphasized a deﬁnition of

620 Lindell and Perry

perceived risk in terms of people’s expectations of

the personal impacts from an extreme environmen-

tal event.(7,8) These expected personal impacts in-

clude death, injury, property damage, and disruption

to daily activities such as work, school, and shop-

ping.(34) Moreover, most research on hazards and dis-

asters has found that risk perception predicts warning

responses such as evacuation(35) and long-term haz-

ard adjustments.(36) These protective responses have

been studied for hazards such as earthquakes,(37)

hurricanes and other coastal storms,(38) ﬂoods,(39)

and volcanic eruptions.(40) However, there have been

some studies in which risk perception was unrelated

to hazard adjustment.(34,40−42)

In addition to the certainty and severity of the ex-

pected personal impacts, environmental threats can

differ in their degree of intrusiveness, which is the

frequency of “thoughts generated by the distinc-

tive hazard-relevant associations that people have

with everyday events, informal hazard-relevant dis-

cussions with peers, and hazard-relevant information

received passively from the media” (Ref. 13, p. 125).

Hazard intrusiveness is correlated with the adoption

of earthquake hazard adjustments(34,41) and expecta-

tions of participating in hurricane mitigation incen-

tive programs.(43)

Expected personal impacts and hazard intru-

siveness are related to the recency, frequency, and

intensity of people’s personal experience with haz-

ard events.(34,43−45) Such experience can involve ca-

sualties or damage experienced by the respondent

him/herself, by members of the immediate or ex-

tended family, or by friends, neighbors, or co-

workers.(34) In turn, hazard experience is often corre-

lated with proximity to earthquake,(46) hurricane,(47)

and ﬂood(48) sources. In addition to the indirect effect

of hazard proximity on risk perception (via hazard

experience), there can also be a direct relation be-

tween hazard proximity and perceived personal risk

that is determined by a perceived risk gradient relat-

ing increasing proximity to increased risk.(49) How-

ever, the resulting risk judgments can be quite inac-

curate because there are cases in which people have

limited ability to identify their location in risk ar-

eas.(50,51)

Information from environmental cues and social

warnings, together with prior beliefs about the haz-

ard agent, produces a situational perception of per-

sonal risk that is characterized by beliefs about the

ways in which environmental conditions will produce

speciﬁc personal impacts. In hurricanes, for example,

risk perceptions have been characterized by people’s

beliefs about the degree to which storm surge, inland

ﬂooding, and storm wind will cause their death or

injury, kill or injure their loved ones, destroy their

property, or disrupt their jobs or basic services such

as electric power and water.(25,38)

3.2.2. Perceptions of Hazard Adjustments

A substantial amount of research has focused on

people’s perceptions of natural hazards but there is

also a need for studying their perceptions of natu-

ral hazard adjustments.(52) Such studies are needed

because the theory of reasoned action (TRA) posits

that one’s attitude toward an object (e.g., seismic haz-

ard) is less predictive of behavior than one’s attitude

toward an act (seismic hazard adjustments) relevant

to that object.(53) Thus, to understand the adoption of

hazard adjustments, it is just as important to under-

stand the perceived attributes of the hazard adjust-

ments as the perceived attributes of the hazard itself.

The identity of these perceived attributes can

be surmised from studies on the adoption of haz-

ard adjustments, which have found support for at-

tributes such as effectiveness,(54) cost,(55) required

knowledge,(56) and utility for other purposes.(57)

Lindell and Perry(5,13,52) summarized this line of re-

search by proposing that hazard adjustments can be

deﬁned by hazard-related and resource-related at-

tributes, both of which differentiate among hazard

adjustments.(58) Hazard-related attributes, such as ef-

ﬁcacy in protecting people and property and use-

fulness for other purposes, have been found to be

signiﬁcantly correlated with adoption intention

and actual adjustment.(41,59,60) Resource-related at-

tributes (cost, knowledge and skill requirements,

time requirements, effort requirements, and required

cooperation with others) generally have the pre-

dicted negative correlations with both adoption in-

tention and actual adjustment, but these have been

small and nonsigniﬁcant in studies conducted to date.

The hazard adjustments in these studies have gener-

ally had small resource requirements, so it is unclear

if the lack of support for the signiﬁcance of these at-

tributes is due to this factor.(58)

3.2.3. Perceptions of Social Stakeholders

Previous research has characterized stakehold-

ers as authorities (federal, state, and local gov-

ernment), evaluators (scientists, medical profession-

als, universities), watchdogs (news media, citizens’,

and environmental groups), industry/employers, and

households.(2,61,62) The interrelationships among

stakeholders can be deﬁned by their power over

The Protective Action Decision Model 621

each other’s decisions to adopt hazard adjustments.

French and Raven posited that power relationships

can be deﬁned in terms of six bases—reward, co-

ercive, expert, information, referent, and legitimate

power.(63,64) Reward and coercive power are the

principal bases of regulatory approaches, but these

require continuing surveillance to ensure rewards

are received only for compliance and that punish-

ment will inevitably follow noncompliance.(65) Such

surveillance is rarely feasible, so authorities need to

rely on bases of power other than reward and co-

ercion. French and Raven’s conceptions of expert

(i.e., understanding of cause and effect relationships

in the environment) and information (i.e., knowl-

edge about states of the environment) power sug-

gest assessing perceptions of stakeholders’ hazard ex-

pertise. French and Raven’s conception of referent

power is deﬁned by a person’s sense of shared iden-

tity with another,(66) which is related to that per-

son’s trustworthiness. Although trust has been de-

ﬁned many different ways,(67) fairness, unbiasedness,

willingness to tell the whole story, and accuracy are

central.(68)

French and Raven deﬁned legitimate power by

the rights and responsibilities associated with each

role in a social network, which raises questions about

what households consider to be the responsibility

of different stakeholders for protecting them from

seismic hazard.(63) This is reinforced by research

on stakeholders’ perceived protection responsibility,

which dates from research that attributed low rates

of seismic adjustment adoption to respondents’ be-

liefs that the federal government was the stakeholder

most responsible for coping with earthquakes.(69)

Much later, respondents had come to believe earth-

quake preparedness was an individual’s responsibil-

ity.(70) The conclusion that a perception of personal

protection responsibility leads to a higher level of

seismic adjustment adoption is supported by similar

ﬁndings on tornado adjustment adoption.(71) Recent

research has found that stakeholders differ signiﬁ-

cantly in these perceived characteristics (expertise,

trustworthiness, and protection responsibility) and,

moreover, these characteristics have signiﬁcant pos-

itive correlations with hazard adjustment intentions

and actual adjustment adoption.(41,67)

3.3. Protective Action Decision Making

Once the three predecisional processes have

been completed and the three types of core percep-

tions have been activated, cognitive processing turns

to the series of decision stages—risk identiﬁcation,

risk assessment, protective action search, protective

action assessment, and protective action implemen-

tation. In addition, information-seeking activities in-

clude information needs assessment, communication

action assessment, and communication action imple-

mentation. Each of the decision stages in the PADM

is discussed in detail below.

3.3.1. Risk Identiﬁcation

According to the PADM, people’s threat percep-

tions lead to risk identiﬁcation, which is equivalent to

what Lazarus and Folkman call primary appraisal.(72)

In both emergency response and long-term hazard

adjustment, those at risk must answer the basic ques-

tion of risk identiﬁcation: “Is there a real threat that I

need to pay attention to?”(4,73,74) The importance of

the resulting threat belief is supported by research

showing individuals routinely try to maintain their

deﬁnition of the environment as “normal” in the

face of evidence that it is not.(2) Researchers have

found a positive relationship between level of threat

belief and disaster response across a wide range of

disaster agents, including ﬂoods,(9,73) volcanic erup-

tions,(15,75) hazardous materials emergencies,(5) hur-

ricanes,(25) earthquakes,(76) and nuclear power plant

emergencies.(77,78)

3.3.2. Risk Assessment

The next step, risk assessment, refers to the pro-

cess of determining expected personal impacts that

a disaster could cause.(8,74) The process of assessing

personal relevance has also been recognized as an

important factor by persuasion theorists.(66) In the

risk assessment stage, a positive response to the ques-

tion “Do I need to take protective action?” elicits

protection motivation whether the risk involves a dis-

aster response or long-term hazard adjustment.(79,80)

Some of the factors associated with people’s person-

alization of risk include “the probability of the im-

pending event occurring [and] the severity, to the in-

dividual, of such a development” (Ref. 81, p. 104).

As this quote indicates, the immediacy of a threat

is important because warning recipients must under-

stand that the message describes an event whose

consequences are likely to occur in the very near

future. Thus, immediacy is related to forewarning,

which is the amount of time between the arrival of

a warning (or personal detection of environmental

cues) and disaster onset. People tend to engage in

622 Lindell and Perry

activities such as information seeking and expedi-

ent property protection when they believe there is

more time before impact than the minimum neces-

sary to implement protective action.(9,82) Successful

warning conﬁrmation can ultimately increase compli-

ance with recommended protective actions but does,

inherently, delay them. Similarly, the amount of time

that risk area residents devote to expedient property

protection also delays their initiation of personal pro-

tective action. In both cases, the delay in protective

action might be dangerous because the time of dis-

aster impact cannot be predicted with perfect accu-

racy.(83)

3.3.3. Protective Action Search

If a threat is judged to be real and some un-

acceptable level of personal risk exists, people are

motivated to engage in protective action search—

which involves retrieving one or more feasible pro-

tective actions from memory or obtaining informa-

tion about them from others. The relevant question

in protective action search is “What can be done to

achieve protection?” and its outcome is a decision

set that identiﬁes possible protective actions. In many

instances, an individual’s own knowledge of the haz-

ard will suggest what type of protection to seek (e.g.,

evacuation from ﬂoods or sheltering in the basement

from a tornado).

In addition, those in the risk area might become

aware of feasible protective actions by observing so-

cial cues such as the behavior of others. This occurs,

for example, when neighbors are seen packing cars in

preparation for hurricane evacuation.(84) People also

are likely to consider actions with which they have

had vicarious experience by reading or hearing about

others’ protective actions. Such vicarious experience

is frequently transmitted by the news media and re-

layed by peers. Finally, people also are made aware

of appropriate protective actions by means of dis-

aster warnings and hazard awareness programs that

carry protective action recommendations from au-

thorities. Speciﬁcally, a well-designed warning mes-

sage will assist recipients by providing guidance in

the form of one or more protective action recom-

mendations.(8) However, such guidance is often in-

adequate. For example, water contamination advi-

sories often suggest boiling drinking water, but fail

to explain whether boiled water is also required for

making ice, brushing teeth, rinsing vegetables, brew-

ing coffee, cooking pasta, taking showers, or wash-

ing dishes, counters, hands, or clothes. They also fre-

quently fail to mention other protective actions such

as chlorinating the water or using bottled water.(85)

3.3.4. Protective Action Assessment

After people have established that at least one

protective action is available, they pass from pro-

tective action search to the protective action as-

sessment stage. This involves examining alternative

actions, evaluating them in comparison to the con-

sequences of continuing normal activities, and deter-

mining which of them is the most suitable response

to the situation. At this point, the primary question

is “What is the best method of protection?” and its

outcome is an adaptive plan.

Choice is an inherent aspect of emergencies

because those at risk generally have at least two

options—taking protective action or continuing nor-

mal activities. Comparing alternatives with respect to

their attributes leads, in turn, to a balancing or trade-

off of these attributes with respect to their relative

importance to the decisionmaker. Under some con-

ditions, those at risk can only take one action and,

therefore, must make a choice among the alterna-

tives (e.g., either evacuate or shelter in-place; Ref. 5,

p. 155). In other cases, people can take multiple ac-

tions and must choose which ones to implement ﬁrst.

For example, people in earthquake prone areas are

advised to have a working transistor radio with spare

batteries, at least 4 gallons of water in plastic con-

tainers, a complete ﬁrst-aid kit, and a 4-day supply of

dehydrated or canned food for themselves and their

families. They are also advised to strap water heaters,

tall furniture, and heavy objects to the building walls

and to bolt the house to its foundation.(57)

The end result of protective action assessment

is an adaptive plan, but people’s adaptive plans vary

widely in their speciﬁcity, with some being only vague

goals and others begin extremely detailed. At mini-

mum, a speciﬁc evacuation plan includes a destina-

tion, a route of travel, and a means of transporta-

tion.(9) More detailed plans include a procedure for

reuniting families if members are separated, advance

contact to conﬁrm the destination is available, con-

sideration of alternative routes if the primary route

is unsafe or too crowded, and alternative methods of

transportation if the primary one is not available.(86)

3.3.5. Protective Action Implementation

The ﬁfth step, protective action implementation,

occurs when all the previous questions about risk

reduction have been answered satisfactorily. In

The Protective Action Decision Model 623

general, the implementation of protective actions

consumes resources people would prefer to allocate

to other activities, so those at risk frequently delay

implementation until they have determined that the

immediacy of the threat justiﬁes the disruption of

normal activities. Thus, people often ask the ques-

tion: “Does protective action need to be taken now?”

The answer to this question, whose outcome is the

threat response, is crucial because people sometimes

postpone the implementation of protective action

even when there is imminent danger. As noted ear-

lier, recipients of hurricane warnings have often been

found to endanger their safety because many wait un-

til the last minute to begin their evacuations.(82,87)

Unfortunately, they fail to recognize that adverse

weather conditions and a high volume of trafﬁc can

signiﬁcantly reduce the average speed of evacuat-

ing vehicles, thus running the risk that their evac-

uation will not be completed before the arrival of

storm conditions.(25,88−90) The problem of procrasti-

nation is even more severe in connection with long-

term hazard adjustment than it is in disasters with

ample forewarning because hazard awareness pro-

grams cannot specify even an approximate deadline

by which action must be taken. For example, an

earthquake prediction might only be able to indicate

a 67% chance of a damaging earthquake within the

next 30 years.(91)

3.3.6. Information Needs Assessment

At any stage of the protective action decision

process, some of the people who receive a warning

might ﬁnd that the available information is insufﬁ-

cient to justify a resource-intensive protective action.

When they think time is available, people cope with

the lack of information by searching for additional in-

formation.(9,15,92) The process of information search

begins with an information needs assessment aris-

ing from an individual’s judgment that the available

information is insufﬁcient to justify proceeding fur-

ther in the protective action decision process. Thus, if

any of the questions cannot be answered with an un-

equivocal yes or no, people will ask “What informa-

tion do I need to answer my question?” so they can

generate an identiﬁed information need. People com-

monly need additional information about the cer-

tainty, severity, and immediacy of the threat, and lo-

gistical support for protective action such as suitable

evacuation routes, destinations, modes of transporta-

tion, and arrangements for pets and family members

with major medical needs.

3.3.7. Communication Action Assessment

Identiﬁcation of an information need does not

necessarily suggest where the needed information

can be obtained. Thus, the next question in the in-

formation seeking process is: “Where and how can

I obtain this information?” Addressing this question

leads to information source selection and informa-

tion channel selection, which constitute an informa-

tion search plan. The sources sought are likely to be

affected by the available channels, which in many dis-

asters precludes the use of the telephone because cir-

cuits are so overloaded that it is impossible to ob-

tain a dial tone for hours or even days.(93) Further,

attempts to reach authorities sometimes prove futile

because emergency response agencies are busy han-

dling other calls. Thus, people are often forced to

rely on the mass media and peers—especially for in-

formation about protective actions.(94) This distinc-

tion between risk area residents’ preferred channels

of information receipt and their actual channels of

information receipt also can be seen in connection

with long-term hazard adjustment. For example, res-

idents of communities downstream from the Mt. St.

Helens volcano revealed some signiﬁcant disparities

between their preferred and actual channels of in-

formation receipt in the years after the 1980 erup-

tions.(5) Moreover, there also were signiﬁcant differ-

ences between the two communities of Toutle and

Lexington in both their preferred and actual chan-

nels of information receipt.

3.3.8. Communication Action Implementation

The ﬁnal step in the information search process

is communication action implementation, which pro-

vides decision information by answering the ques-

tion: “Do I need the information now?” If the answer

to this question is positive, that is, they are threat-

ened by an imminent disaster, people will actively

seek the needed information from the most appro-

priate source through the most appropriate channel.

People will go to great lengths, contacting many peo-

ple over a period of minutes to hours, if the prospect

of an imminent disaster needs to be conﬁrmed.(93,95)

Indeed, half of the respondents in one study re-

ported monitoring the news media hourly or more

frequently.(96) However, information seeking will be

less frequent and less active if the location is speciﬁc

but the time of impact is ambiguous. Many residents

of the area around Mt. St. Helens monitored the ra-

dio four or more times a day after the initial ash and

624 Lindell and Perry

steam eruptions.(97) By contrast, the absence of lo-

cational speciﬁcity and time pressure inherent in a

hazard awareness program provides little need for

those at risk to obtain immediate answers, so they

are likely to forego active information seeking in fa-

vor of passive monitoring of the situation. Unfortu-

nately, the absence of a deadline for action means

this passive monitoring is likely to continue until an

imminent threat arises (as in the case of hurricanes

and ﬂoods) or until a disaster strikes (as in the case

of earthquakes).

4. SITUATIONAL IMPEDIMENTS

AND FACILITATORS

The actual implementation of behavioral re-

sponse depends not only on people’s intentions to

take those actions but also on conditions in their

physical and social environment that can impede ac-

tions that they intended to take or that can facili-

tate actions that they did not intend to take.(98) In

most cases, the lack of correspondence between in-

tentions and behavior seems to be caused by imped-

iments rather than unexpected facilitators; there are

many instances in which people have wanted to evac-

uate but lacked a safe place to go and a safe route to

travel.(9) Other impediments include a lack of access

to a personal vehicle (e.g., those who are routinely

transit dependent or families in which one spouse has

the only car during the workday) or a lack of personal

mobility due to physical disabilities.(99,100) In cases in-

volving rapid onset disasters, the separation of fam-

ily members can also be an evacuation impediment.

Until family members have been reunited or sepa-

rated family members can establish communication

contact and agree upon a place to meet, evacuation

is unlikely to occur.(101,102)

5. FEEDBACK

The ﬁnal stage in the PADM is a feedback loop

directed by the communication action assessment

that returns to the initial inputs—environmental and

social cues, and information sources, channel access

and preferences, and warning messages. This feed-

back loop is extremely common in sudden onset dis-

asters because people seek to conﬁrm or contradict

any warnings they have received, typically by con-

tacting a different source using a different channel.(9)

Alternatively, some people might be looking to ob-

tain additional information about the threat, about

which protective action to select, or about how to im-

plement a protective action that they have selected.

Finally, people might relay warnings to others or dis-

cuss the implications of the information they have

received.(2) As is the case with the adoption of long-

term hazard adjustments, a perceived lack of urgency

in obtaining information about a hazard or protective

actions can lead to procrastination.

6. THEORETICAL ASSESSMENT OF

THE PADM

As the previous sections indicate, there has been

a substantial amount of research that has been con-

ducted within the framework of the PADM or on

variables that are part of the PADM (e.g., other re-

search on the relationship of risk perception to evac-

uation). In addition, there has been some limited

discussion of the relationship between the PADM

and the ﬁndings from research in domains other

than hazards and disasters—including persuasion, so-

cial conformity, behavioral decision theory, attitude-

behavior theory, and information seeking. However,

there has only been limited discussion of the PADM

in relation to other theories of protective action.

6.1. PADM Comparison to Other Theories of

Protective Action

The PADM identiﬁes a series of information-

processing stages relevant to household adoption

of protective actions and—for each stage—the typ-

ical activity performed, question asked, and out-

come. The characterization of the PADM as a stage

model of protective action warrants a comment

in light of Weinstein, Rothman, and Sutton’s cri-

tique of stage models of health behavior.(103) Like

Janis and Mann’s(4) conﬂict model, the PADM dif-

fers from stage models such as the Transtheoreti-

cal Model (TTM)(104) and the Precaution Adoption

Process Model (PAPM)(105) in three important ways.

First, risk area residents implement emergency re-

sponse actions such as evacuation and sheltering in-

place temporarily rather than permanently. Thus, the

PADM lacks an equivalent to the TTM’s mainte-

nance stage and the idea of a “termination stage”

has a qualitatively different meaning for the situa-

tions addressed by the PADM. In the TTM, termi-

nation is “the stage at which individuals have zero

temptation”(104) to revert to their previous behavior.

Thus, the TTM is clearly directed toward (health)

behaviors that must be maintained indeﬁnitely

through continuing effort. In the PADM, by contrast,

The Protective Action Decision Model 625

“termination” of an inherently temporary emergency

response would be the stage at which it is safe for

individuals to revert to their previous (“normal”)

behavior.

Second, emergency response actions have signiﬁ-

cantly different time scales for their decision-making

processes than do health behavior changes. During

emergencies, people might pass through all of the

stages of the PADM in a matter of minutes, whereas

the TTM and PAPM address stages of change that

are more likely to unfold over months or years. Fi-

nally, the PADM is typically applied to situations

in which emergency managers are transmitting in-

formation concurrently to large numbers of people

who are responding to a single “focusing event”(106)

rather than situations in which health professionals

conduct personal interventions that are tailored to

individuals in different stages of a behavioral change

process. Nonetheless, the PADM can be applied to

long-term hazard adjustment as well as emergency

response actions. In such cases as deciding to insure

houses, elevate them above ﬂood level, or bolt them

to their foundations, there are more notable overlaps

between the situations addressed by the PADM, on

the one hand, and the TTM and PAPM, on the other

hand. However, the extent of the overlap needs to be

examined in future research.

In addition to examining the PADM’s compat-

ibility with stage models of health behavior, fu-

ture research also needs to systematically examine

its theoretical similarities to and differences from

other psychological models. For example, hazard

adjustment attributes in the PADM are equiva-

lent to TRA’s attitude toward the act. However,

although disaster research has found that confor-

mity with the behavior of others can be a sig-

niﬁcant inﬂuence on people’s evacuation decisions,

there has been no PADM research that has ex-

plicitly addressed the subjective norm as it has

been conceptualized in the TRA. Moreover, the

PADM’s premise that people can vary in the ex-

tent to which they base their protective action deci-

sions upon thoughtful consideration of information

about environmental cues, social context, warning

source characteristics, and warning message charac-

teristics or, alternatively, upon unquestioning com-

pliance with an authority’s recommendation is sim-

ilar to ideas about central versus peripheral routes

to persuasion in the Elaboration Likelihood Model

(ELM).(107) The ﬁndings of PADM research that are

compatible with the ELM need to be replicated and

extended.(41,67)

Finally, there are some similarities as well as

distinct differences between PADM and protection

motivation theory (PMT).(108−110) PADM’s concep-

tion of hazard-related attributes (protection of per-

sons, protection of property, and utility for other

purposes) is similar to, but broader than, PMT’s re-

sponse efﬁcacy. However, PADM’s conception of

resource-related attributes (cost, time and effort

requirements, knowledge and skill, and required co-

operation) is distinctly different from PMT’s self-

efﬁcacy because the latter seems most closely re-

lated to the knowledge and skill component of the

resource-related attributes. Moreover, the resource-

related attributes are characteristics of a protective

action whereas self-efﬁcacy is a characteristic of the

person. An advantage of the PADM formulation is

that assessing the perceived characteristics of differ-

ent protective actions makes it possible to determine

if people have erroneous perceptions of the alterna-

tive actions and correct those misperceptions if they

exist. In addition, identifying the characteristics of

different protective actions makes it possible to iden-

tify which actions are most likely to be adopted and

to initially focus a risk communication program on

increasing their adoption. Once the most resource-

effective hazard adjustments have been adopted (the

ones that provide the greatest efﬁcacy in protect-

ing persons and property for a given level of re-

sources), the risk communication program can be

redirected toward the more resource-intensive haz-

ard adjustments. Nonetheless, a focus on (personal)

self-efﬁcacy might be more useful than a focus on

(task) resource requirements in some situations. For

example, an emphasis on self-efﬁcacy might be useful

when one must implement a single protective action

(e.g., weight loss) whereas a focus on task demands

(resource requirements) might be more useful when

someone can choose among multiple protective ac-

tions.

6.2. Identifying the Core Perceptions

that Determine Protective Actions

One major implication of the literature cited in

the previous section is that, despite extensive theo-

rizing and data collection, it still is not entirely clear

what motivates people to take protective action.

One of the major contributions of PADM research

is the ﬁnding that, though risk perception is usu-

ally an important determinant of protective action,

there are other perceptions that are also important—

and sometimes even more important than risk

626 Lindell and Perry

perception. There is a need to consider other as-

pects of threat perception, such as hazard intrusive-

ness, and also to consider perceptions of protective

actions and stakeholders. Nonetheless, it is not en-

tirely clear whether the PADM’s core perceptions of

threat, protective actions, and stakeholders are them-

selves sufﬁcient to account for an adequate percent-

age of the variance in people’s hazard adjustment

adoption.

This issue is particularly important when hazard

experts, such as seismologists and earthquake engi-

neers, try unsuccessfully to communicate event prob-

abilities and consequences to risk area residents in

an effort to increase the adoption of hazard adjust-

ments. Lindell(111) addressed this problem by char-

acterizing risk area residents’ perceptions of three

hazards (a volcanic eruption of Mt. St. Helens, a

toxic chemical release from a railroad tank car, and

a radiological materials release from a nearby nu-

clear power plant) in terms of four categories of haz-

ard characteristics that were consistent with previous

theorizing about technological hazards(32) and dis-

aster impacts.(1) Respondents rated the three haz-

ards in terms of hazard agent characteristics (like-

lihood of a major release, ease of risk reduction,

and likelihood of release prevention), impact charac-

teristics (speed of onset, existence of environmental

cues, scope of impact, and duration of impact), ex-

pected personal impacts (immediate death, delayed

cancer, genetic effects, and total property loss), and

affective/behavioral reactions (dread, frequency of

thought about the hazard, and frequency of discus-

sion about the hazard). The results suggested that

perceived impact characteristics mediated the rela-

tionship between characteristics of the hazard agent

characteristics and expected personal impacts. Simi-

lar results emerged from a study of household evac-

uation decision making in response to Hurricane

Ike.(84) Perceived storm characteristics (local land-

fall, major intensity, and rapid onset) partially me-

diated the effects of coastal proximity and hurri-

cane experience on expected personal impacts (surge

damage, inland ﬂood damage, storm wind damage,

and casualties), which, in turn, had a direct effect on

evacuation decisions.

Another line of research that is likely to prove

fruitful in understanding people’s conceptions of haz-

ards is the mental models approach.(31) Such studies

interview individuals to elicit the elements of their

beliefs about a speciﬁc hazard domain and the in-

terrelationships among the elements of that domain.

After interviewing a number of participants, the indi-

vidual mental models can be aggregated into a con-

sensus model. In a somewhat similar manner, the

hazard beliefs approach(30,112) presents some very

broad questions about a hazard to a pretest group,

identiﬁes common themes in the responses, and de-

velops an inventory of ﬁxed-response items that as-

sess both accurate and erroneous beliefs. Both of

these inductive approaches are likely to prove most

useful in characterizing people’s beliefs about new

technologies such as nanotechnology.(113)

One of the major impediments to assessing how

people think about hazards is that they vary in the

differentiation of their beliefs about a domain and,

among those with differentiated beliefs, there is vari-

ation in the degree to which those beliefs are in-

tegrated.(114) At one extreme are those who have

few or no beliefs about the domain whereas, at the

other extreme, are those who have highly differenti-

ated belief systems characterized by a large number

of elements that vary in the strength of their link-

ages.(115,116) Consistent with these analyses in other

domains, there is evidence that risk area residents

vary in the degree to which they have differentiated

schemas or mental models of environmental haz-

ards. This variation in people’s hazard models has

led some researchers to measure respondents’ reac-

tions to hazards simply in terms of a single question-

naire item of concern about the problem.(117) If risk

area residents have only very diffuse conceptions of

seismic threat, then a global construct such as con-

cern might be a more accurate characterization of

their beliefs than the speciﬁc dimensions assumed

by PADM. Further research is needed to determine

what proportions of the population have speciﬁc be-

liefs, global beliefs, and no beliefs at all about the en-

vironmental hazards to which they are exposed and

the actions they can take to protect themselves.

7. PADM APPLICATIONS

The PADM has mostly been applied in three

areas—risk communication programs, evacuation

modeling, and long-term hazard adjustment. Each of

these is discussed below.

7.1. PADM Application to Developing Community

Risk Communication Programs

Research on which the PADM is based has

led to the development of an extensive set of

recommendations for risk communication, particu-

larly in communities with ethnic minorities. These

The Protective Action Decision Model 627

recommendations for community risk communica-

tion programs are based upon the distinct differences

between risk communication activities undertaken

during the continuing hazard phase (the time be-

tween incidents) and those taken during an escalating

crisis (when there is adequate forewarning of disas-

ter impact) or emergency response (when forewarn-

ing is absent). Risk communication during the con-

tinuing hazard phase is directed toward encouraging

long-term hazard adjustments such as hazard mitiga-

tion, emergency preparedness, and hazard insurance

purchase. Risk communication during an escalating

crisis or emergency response is directed toward en-

couraging appropriate disaster responses. However,

risk communication during both phases requires the

development of an effective risk communication pro-

gram. Such programs need to be carefully developed

during the continuing hazard phase because the hu-

man and ﬁnancial resources available for environ-

mental hazard management are usually limited until

a crisis occurs. Although resources are more read-

ily available during a crisis or emergency response,

time is often severely limited so improvised ef-

forts at risk communications can produce spectacular

failures.(118)

There are ﬁve basic functions that should be ad-

dressed in the continuing hazard phase. These are

strategic analysis, operational analysis, resource mo-

bilization, program development, and program im-

plementation (see Table I). The purpose of strategic

analysis is to identify community constraints and set

appropriate goals for the overall risk communication

program. The purpose of operational analysis is to

use the elements of the classic communication model

(source, channel, message, receiver, effect, and feed-

back) to identify the community resources that are

available for the risk communication program. The

purpose of resource mobilization is to enlist the sup-

port of stakeholders in the community who are likely

to share an interest in using risk communication to

reduce hazard vulnerability. Program development

for all phases involves the use of available commu-

nity resources to develop a workable system that can

implement risk communication in both the continu-

ing hazard phase and also in an escalating crisis or

emergency response. As soon as the risk communi-

cation program has been developed, it is possible to

immediately begin program implementation for the

continuing hazard phase. This function involves con-

ducting the activities that will encourage risk area

residents to adopt long-term hazard adjustments. It

also involves conducting the activities that will allow

Table I. Tasks for the Continuing Hazard Phase

Strategic analysis

Conduct a community hazard/vulnerability analysis

Analyze the community context

Identify the community’s prevailing perceptions of the hazards

and hazard adjustments

Set appropriate goals for the risk communication program

Operational analysis

Identify and assess feasible hazard adjustments for the

community and its households/businesses

Identify ways to provide incentives, sanctions, and

technological innovations

Identify the available risk communication sources in the

community

Identify the available risk communication channels in the

community

Identify speciﬁc audience segments

Resource mobilization

Obtain the support of senior appointed and elected ofﬁcials

Enlist the participation of other government agencies

Enlist the participation of nongovernmental (nonproﬁt) and

private sector organizations

Work with the mass media

Work with neighborhood associations and service

organizations

Program development for all phases

Staff, train, and exercise a crisis communications team

Establish procedures for maintaining an effective

communication ﬂow in an escalating crisis and in emergency

response

Develop a comprehensive risk communication program

Plan to make use of informal communication networks

Establish procedures for obtaining feedback from the news

media and the public

Program implementation for the continuing hazard phase

Build source credibility by increasing perceptions of expertise

and trustworthiness

Use a variety of channels to disseminate hazard information

Describe community or facility hazard adjustments being

planned or implemented

Describe feasible household hazard adjustments

Evaluate program effectiveness

Source: Lindell & Perry (2004).

authorities to determine if the risk communication

program has been effective.

The format of Table I might seem to imply that

the ﬁve risk communication functions form a simple

linear sequence, but some tasks will be performed

concurrently and the entire process will frequently be

iterative. For example, some resource mobilization

tasks might take place concurrently with the opera-

tional analysis, or tasks conducted during the opera-

tional analysis phase might be suspended temporar-

ily in order to return to the strategic analysis and

reﬁne it.

628 Lindell and Perry

Once authorities have determined that they are

in an escalating crisis or emergency response, they

need to implement the predetermined risk communi-

cation actions that were developed during the contin-

uing hazard phase. These include activating the crisis

communication team promptly, determining the ap-

propriate time to release sensitive information, and

selecting the communication channels appropriate to

the situation. An escalating crisis or emergency re-

sponse also requires authorities to maintain source

credibility with the news media and the public, pro-

vide timely and accurate information to the news

media and the public, and evaluate performance

through postincident critiques. For further details on

the application of the PADM to the development

of community risk communication programs, see

Ref. 13, chapter 5.

7.2. PADM Application to Evacuation Models

Most of the research on the PADM and similar

models has focused on the prediction of whether peo-

ple will engage in a particular behavior. Although

this is an important application, there are cases in

which it is important to predict when people will en-

gage in a particular behavior. For example, the tim-

ing of a household’s evacuation departure is a critical

input to transportation analysts’ evacuation models

because evacuation routes can become overloaded

if too many vehicles enter the evacuation route sys-

tem at the same time. Thus, local ofﬁcials seeking to

manage the evacuation need to understand the rate

at which people receive an initial warning and the

time it takes them to prepare to evacuate (see Refs.

119 and 120 for further discussion of evacuation time

components). Each warning mechanism (siren, tone-

alert radio, radio, television, and telephone) has a

characteristic rate of exposure over time.(5,23,121) In

addition, warning mechanisms vary in terms of their

ability to attract attention and provide comprehensi-

ble messages that will change risk area residents’ core

perceptions of threat, protective actions, and stake-

holders in the desired directions.

The time households spend in preparing to

evacuate appears to involve two components, men-

tal preparation and logistical preparation. Mental

preparation is the time it takes to collect and pro-

cess the information needed to decide an evacua-

tion is necessary. The existence of a period of men-

tal preparation has been documented in research

indicating that people engage in milling, during

which time they seek conﬁrmation that a danger ex-

ists, obtain further information about the threat and

alternative protective actions, and relay warnings to

peers.(2) The broad outlines of this process are under-

stood,(13,14,122) but there appears to be no research on

the duration of psychological preparation for protec-

tive action.

Logistical preparation is the time it takes for

a household to assemble the people and resources

needed to implement protective action. Thus, evac-

uees need to perform tasks such as assembling fam-

ily members, packing bags for the trip, and securing

the house before leaving.(82) The time required for

mental preparation and logistical preparation both

contribute to total preparation time, but these com-

ponents do not seem to be additive because the two

components cannot be presumed to be mutually ex-

clusive. That is, some household members might be

searching for information at the same time that oth-

ers are packing bags and still others installing hur-

ricane shutters. Available evidence has documented

that households’ preparation times vary as a function

of incident characteristics; for example, preparation

times for evacuation from the Mt. St. Helens eruption

were noticeably different from those for Hurricane

Lili.(82) Because of these and other differences, pre-

dictions of evacuation departure times have been less

successful than predictions of households’ evacuation

decisions. Some researchers have tried to improve

prediction by adopting estimation models such as

neural networks, sequential logit, and survival anal-

ysis but these have had modest success.(87,123−125)

Other research has extended the scope of the

PADM to examine evacuation logistics—people’s

actions between the time they decide to evacuate

and the time they arrive at their evacuation destina-

tions(86) as well as the return entry process.(126) The

latter process is, in some respects, just the reverse of

the evacuation problem. However, it is more com-

plicated because of the logistical problems author-

ities experience in communicating reentry informa-

tion to evacuees that might be scattered over dozens

of towns in multiple states.

7.3. PADM Application to Hazard

Adjustment Adoption

A recent review of research on household adop-

tion of hazard adjustments concluded that risk per-

ception is consistently related to the adoption of

hazard adjustments, but perceptions of stakehold-

ers and hazard adjustments are also relevant and

deserve greater attention.(36) There is considerable

The Protective Action Decision Model 629

evidence that hazard experience increases hazard ad-

justment adoption, but hazard proximity and hazard

intrusiveness also appear to play signiﬁcant roles and

should be the focus of additional research. Finally,

demographic variables continue to be unreliable pre-

dictors of hazard adjustment adoption but should re-

ceive continuing attention to assess their effects on

risk perception, stakeholder perceptions, and hazard

adjustment perceptions, as well as hazard experience,

hazard proximity, and hazard intrusiveness.

One of the major limitations of hazards and dis-

asters studies to date is that the PADM predicts

that some of the variables should form causal chains.

For example, hazard proximity is predicted to cause

hazard experience, hazard experience is predicted

to cause risk perception, and risk perception is pre-

dicted to cause hazard adjustment adoption. Another

example is that perceptions of information sources’

expertise, trustworthiness, and protection responsi-

bility should affect risk area residents’ risk percep-

tions, which, in turn, should affect their adoption

of hazard adjustments. That is, each successive vari-

able is hypothesized to completely mediate the re-

lationship between the variable that precedes it and

the variable that follows it so that, for example,

the estimated effect of stakeholder perceptions on

hazard adjustment adoption becomes nonsigniﬁcant

when controlling for risk perception. Most hazards

and disasters studies to date have used single equa-

tion models to predict a single dependent variable

such as household hazard adjustment or evacuation

so their results cannot shed any light on the me-

diation hypotheses. Moreover, the few studies that

did report tests of the PADM’s mediation hypothe-

ses have found only partial mediation where com-

plete mediation was expected.(34,44) Nonetheless, the

results did suggest that risk area residents’ aware-

ness of the available hazard adjustments and accurate

perceptions of their attributes do mediate the rela-

tionship between hazard experience and hazard ad-

justment.(59,127) In addition, Lindell and Prater found

evidence that hazard intrusiveness had an effect on

hazard adjustment adoption that was independent of

perceived personal risk.(34)

In some cases, the failure of a complete me-

diation hypothesis has a theoretically logical expla-

nation. For example, the inability of risk percep-

tion or hazard intrusiveness to completely mediate

the relationship between perceived stakeholder char-

acteristics and hazard adjustment adoption is con-

sistent with Petty and Cacioppo’s(128) distinction be-

tween central and peripheral routes to persuasion

and Chaiken’s(129) distinction between systematic

and heuristic processes. Both theories assert that in-

cidental factors such as stakeholder perceptions af-

fect attitudes and behavior without affecting salient

beliefs or subjective norms (to use terms from TRA).

Further research is needed to determine if the fail-

ures to ﬁnd complete mediation are due to additional

variables speciﬁed by the PADM, other variables not

speciﬁed by the PADM, or are simply manifestations

of the effects of peripheral/heuristic processing.

8. CONCLUSION

This article has described an updated version

of the PADM and summarized the research that

supports its principal components. This review in-

cludes articles that were cited in Lindell and Perry,(13)

but also includes other research conducted prior to

and subsequent to that book’s publication. There

are varying degrees of support for different com-

ponents of the PADM. Some components have ex-

tensive support, whereas others have conﬂicting or

counter-intuitive ﬁndings, and still others are largely

untested. Future research should seek to resolve the

conﬂicting ﬁndings, explain the counterintuitive ﬁnd-

ings, and examine the untested propositions.

In addition to its predictive validity, any theoret-

ical model should be useful. Accordingly, this arti-

cle has described the ways in which the PADM has

been applied to three different areas—risk commu-

nication, evacuation modeling, and long-term hazard

adjustment. Although these applications are in their

early stages, the evidence to date suggests that the

PADM is continuing to evolve into a useful frame-

work for managing societal response to environmen-

tal hazards. Applications of the model would not

need to produce large changes in behavior to be valu-

able. Updating an argument made in an earlier arti-

cle,(41) major disasters are so costly—the economic

impact of Hurricane Katrina was estimated to range

from $81 billion(130) to $140 billion(131)—that even a

1% decrease in losses would save hundreds of mil-

lions if not billions of dollars.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was supported by the National Sci-

ence Foundation under Grants SES 0527699, SES

0838654, and CMM 0927739. None of the conclusions

expressed here necessarily reﬂects views other than

those of the authors.

630 Lindell and Perry

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Taoyuan is one of the cities in Taiwan known to be prone to natural hazards, such as typhoons and earthquakes. This research aimed to explore the intention of people in Taoyuan to purchase a house by utilizing an extended Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) approach. A total of 212 residents of Taoyuan, Taiwan, voluntarily participated in this research by filling an online questionnaire which was shared through a purposive sampling approach. The questionnaire filled out by the participants consists of 30 indicators classified into 6 latent variables such as experience of earthquake, experience of the typhoon, attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and intention. PLS-SEM showed that experience of typhoon (ET) and experience of earthquake (EE) had significant effects on attitude (A). In addition, experience of earthquake and experience of typhoon had also significant effects on subjective norms (SN) and perceived behavioral control (PBC) which led to the intention (I). Interestingly, the effect of past typhoon experience on house purchase intention was found to be higher than the effect of past earthquake experience on house purchase intention. This research could be used to help the government or relevant agencies to formulate disaster management policies and better housing construction plans.

Sharing and Searching on Social Media in Crises and Disasters – a Latent Class Analysis of a Representative Online Sample

Article

Dec 2024

Influence of risk information and perception on residents’ flood behavioural responses in Inland Northern China

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2024
NAT HAZARDS

In recent years, the frequency and severity of extreme flood hazards have increased as a consequence of global warming, exposing non-disaster-prone regions to unprecedented risk. While traditional risk communication research has focused on risk information and individual factors such as residents’ emotion and cognition in relation to flood problem-focused coping, comprehensive consideration of these interrelated factors and their link to emotion-focused coping has been lacking. Thus, this study examined these relationships among 619 residents of Mentougou District, Beijing—a northern inland city of China. Hierarchical ordinary least-squares (OLS) regression and multiple parallel mediation analyses were employed to determine the influence of risk information and perception on residents’ behavioural responses. The results indicated the following: (1) Residents display a high willingness for both problem- and emotion-focused coping, with no discernible preference for either. (2) Education level significantly affects both coping styles, while age influences only problem-focused coping; substantial losses from previous flood experiences diminish residents’ emotional coping capacity. (3) The quality and credibility of risk information positively affect both behavioural responses. (4) Affective risk perception supports only emotion-focused coping, whereas cognitive risk perception positively impacts both coping types. Additionally, affective and cognitive risk perceptions jointly mediate the link between risk information credibility and emotion-focused coping. This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by elucidating the underlying processes and mechanisms that shape flood behavioural responses, offering valuable insights for improving flood risk management in non-disaster-prone areas.

Context matters when evacuating large cities: Shifting the focus from individual characteristics to location and social vulnerability

Article

Dec 2024
ENVIRON SCI POLICY

A mass evacuation modeling framework to account for vulnerabilities in staged evacuation

Article

Dec 2024

Stage Theories of Health Behavior: Conceptual and Methodological Issues

Article

Full-text available

May 1998

Despite growing interest in stage theories of health behavior, there is considerable confusion in the literature concerning the essential characteristics of stage theories and the manner in which such theories should be tested. In this article, the 4 key characteristics of a stage theory—a category system, an ordering of categories, similar barriers to change within categories, and different barriers to change between categories—are discussed in detail. Examples of stage models of health behavior also are described. Four major types of research designs that might be used for testing stage theories are examined, including examples from the empirical literature. The most commonly used design, which involves cross-sectional comparisons of people believed to be in different stages, is shown to have only limited value for testing whether behavior change follows a stage process.

Volcanic Risk Perception and Adjustment in a Multi-Hazard Environment

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2008

Hazard risk perceptions and protective behaviors are examined for wildfires, earthquakes and volcanic activity. Data were gathered in two northern California (USA) communities that are exposed to all three hazard types. It was found that resident risk perceptions approximated the risks calculated by experts. Personal risks associated with fires were significantly lower than property risks associated with the same threat. The discrepancy between person and property risks for earthquakes and volcanic activity was much smaller. In general, it was found that the number of protective adjustments undertaken for each hazard was small (averaging about half of the possible number measured). When combined in a regression analysis, risk perception was not a statistically significant predictor of number of adjustments for any of the three hazards. Resident's sense of responsibility for self-protection and experience with property damage were significant predictors of adjustment for all three hazards. Information seeking behavior was significantly related to protective actions for earthquakes and volcanic activity, but not for fire hazards. In general, an insufficient number of residents reported experience with personal injury or harm to make meaningful assessments of the effect of this variable on adjustments.

Warning and evacuation: A night for hard houses

Article

Full-text available

Jan 1997

Communicating Environmental Risk in Multiethnic Communities

Book

Jan 2004

Waiting for Disaster

Book

Dec 1986

Risk Communication: A Mental Models Approach

Book

Jul 2001

People today must make decisions about many health, safety, and environmental risks. Nuclear power, HIV/AIDS, radon, vaccines, climate change, and emerging infectious diseases are just some issues that may face them in the news media, ballot box, or doctor's office. In order to make sound choices they need to get good information. Because their time is limited, that information has to be carefully selected and clearly presented. This book provides a systematic approach for risk communicators and technical experts, hoping to serve the public by providing information about risks. The procedure uses approaches from risk and decision analysis to identify the most relevant information; it uses approaches from psychology and communication theory to ensure that it is understood. This book is written in nontechnical terms, designed to make the approach feasible for anyone willing to try it. It is illustrated with successful communications, on a variety of topics.

Springer Series on Environmental Management

Article

Jan 1986

Thomas E. Drabek

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.

The bases of social power, studies in social power, Ann Arbor

Article