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The Effect of Culture on Risk Perception, Hazard Mitigation, and Warning Response. Ashley Coles University of Arizona. Warnings must be…. Heard Understood What is happening, time, how to prepare Believed Warning is true, danger is imminent Personalized
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The Effect of Culture on Risk Perception, Hazard Mitigation, and Warning Response Ashley Coles University of Arizona
Warnings must be… • Heard • Understood • What is happening, time, how to prepare • Believed • Warning is true, danger is imminent • Personalized • Risk to self or property is perceived • Responded to Mileti, 1995
Culture? • Hazards research tends to focus on prediction and prevention of events, rather than why people are vulnerable in the first place • Cultural factors affect ALL stages of warning response
Main cultural factors • Trust and blame • Science, government • Incorporation • Extent of social networks • Self (and community) efficacy • Locus of control – internal vs. external • Autonomy • Social roles • Time view • Looking to past, present, or future
Mary Douglas: Risk and Blame Individualist/Market Sect/Enclave Autonomy Isolate Incorporation Hierarchy/Bureaucracy
Individualist/Market • Competitive market-style science • Conflicting conclusions lead to mistrust of science behind warnings • Value private freedom, resent restrictions on behavior • Smaller social networks • Focus on present • High self-efficacy • Can be good or bad
Hierarchy/Bureaucracy • Trust established science, less open to new ideas • Trust authority figures • More specific social roles • Focus on the past • Self-central view of decision-making
Sect/Enclave • Trust only those within group • Extensive social networks • Equal or fairly equal social roles • Focused on future • Efficacy depends on how group formed • Voluntary – high • Involuntary – low
Isolates • Trust no one • No social networks • Low self-efficacy • Perceive threats, but too fatalistic to take action or precaution …a lost cause?
Your ideas? • Comments on theory • How to test this theory • How to make it useful in practice for YOU • Especially NWS and emergency managers