Department of War Studies

1. Department of War Studies Understanding and Informing Public and Practitioner Responses to Extreme Events: The Role of Risk Communication, Risk Perception and Behaviour Dr. Brooke Rogers Reader in Risk and Terror King’s College London Department of War Studies Twitter: @DrBrookeRogers Counter Terror Expo 29th April 2014 www.kcl.ac.uk/warstudies

2. Overview • Discuss the importance of understanding organisational assumptions about employee and public behaviour during extreme events. • Demonstrate that understanding public and employee perceptions of risk and threat is key to understanding how members of the public and staff will behave during extreme events. • Identify the disjoint between emergency planning assumptions and public/employee compliance with official advice. • Identify strategies for more effective risk communication.

3. Risk Communication: • Risk communication can: • Play a variety of roles in preparing for, responding to, and recovering froma broad range of natural and technological, accidental, and malicious disasters (Rogers & Pearce, 2013). • Be used to reduce anxiety during times of crisis, to manage awarenessin order to maintain engagement, or to raise awareness of issueswhen engagement is low (Government Office for Science, 2009, p. 2). • Improve resilienceacross organisations and communities. www.kcl.ac.uk/warstudies

4. Behaviour: • Organisational assumptions about behaviour during extreme events can impact the organisational effectiveness/ability to respond: • Staff behaviour (Deloitte, Resilient Futures, PRACTICE) • Public behaviour (Home Office, PIRATE, CIE Toolkit, Safer Spaces, PRACTICE) • Other organisations (interconnectivity) (Resilient Futures, PRACTICE) • Public assumptions about services/response capabilities of organisations during extreme events can undermine trust if/when reality does not match expectations (CIE Toolkit, PIRATE, CIE Toolkit, PRACTICE). www.kcl.ac.uk/warstudies

5. Examples from Resilient Futures: Predicted public response: “Major panic” (G1, P1) “Probably panicking” (G2,P1) “Panic, likely to be scared as a result” (G9P2) “Probably disorientation – panic” (G10, P2) Leads to focus on reassurance: “Not to panic. Evacuate area in orderly manner” (G1, P1) “Don’t panic.” (G2,P2) “Reassurance and where risks are” (G10,P2) “Reassure members of the public and media and reduce panic.” (G2,P3 ) “Above all they will need reassurance” (G3,P1) “Reassuring people that there is no further threat from terrorists” (G9,P1) Emergency planning assumptions: Fail to incorporate human behaviour Are based on contradictory assumptions. Examples from CIE Toolkit: Panic: “Camera crews wouldn’t take them long to get there, so it’ll be on television within minutes and people around them will be starting to panic” (CIE G1, P4) Compliance: “I think quite generally in any incidents like that they see a uniform and they sort of feel a bit better, ‘I feel safe’ and you’ve just got to say something to most of them and they’ll just do as you tell them” (ibid) Informing Planning Assumptions

6. What will the public do? • There is some evidence for panic, particularly in situations where there have been fires in enclosed spaces (e.g. Iroquois Theatre fire in Chicago) • However, overwhelming evidence suggests that when faced with disasters and emergencies, people become interdependent and co-operative and panic is rare • 9/11 WTC evacuation - e.g. <20mins from 78th floor (Proulx & Fahy, 2003) • 7/7 tube bombings – 1st hand accounts of pro-social behaviour (Sheppard et al, 2006) • Survivors of 11 emergencies – crowd sociality (Drury, Cocking & Reicher, 2009) • What appear to be panic behaviours may be: • Lack of choice rather than poor decision making (e.g. mass move towards exit) • A rational choice under circumstances • Rushing for exits in a structural fire may be only rational course of action • ‘Panic buying’ may be reasonable attempt to acquire protection against a real threat • Increased info seeking is a rational response to lack of clear guidance • A challenging response ≠ panic! www.kcl.ac.uk/warstudies

7. Risk Perception, Risk Communication and Behaviour: • Risk perceptions influence behaviours that may determine economic, social, physical and psychological impacts of crises. • The behavioural responses brought about by perceptions of risk can facilitate, hinder, or overwhelm the ability of organisations to respond during extreme events. • Misunderstandings about the behavioural element of extreme events can make a well-practiced technical response ineffective. • How are perceptions of risk formed and how do they drive behaviour? www.kcl.ac.uk/warstudies

8. Risk Perception Factors: Voluntary vs. Involuntary Familiar vs. Non-familiar Unknown Risk: New, unknown to those exposed, delayed effects. Control vs. Lack of Control Fair vs. Not Fair Natural vs. Technological Dread vs. No Dread Dread Risk: catastrophic potential, fatal consequences, uncontrollability, inequitable, and high risk to future generations Expert Perceptions of Risk: Can I identify a clear cause and effect relationship? Can I quantify the amount of harm? Do I suspect a hazard, based on past experience? Is there a possibility of an accident? Is there possible exposure to the risk (e.g. pollutant/violence)? Is there evidence of damage? Comparing Apples and Oranges www.kcl.ac.uk/warstudies

9. Encouraging protective behaviours Response efficacy Perceived severity Threat appraisal Coping appraisal Self efficacy Fear arousal Response costs Intention Behaviour www.kcl.ac.uk/warstudies Protection Motivation Theory (Rogers, 1975)

10. Improving Risk Communication:

11. Improving risk communication • Messages should be targeted (Pearce et al, 2012; Rogers & Pearce, 2013) • From reassurance to encouraging protective behaviours • Target coping appraisals (response efficacy, self efficacy, response cost) • Behavioural interventions must take into account perceptions about: • The event • The efficacy of recommended behaviours • The ease of recommended behaviours • The cost of recommended behaviours • Those who are tasked with communicating the response • It is important to recognise that under response may be as problematic as over response. • Expectation of panic obscures the ways in which resilience may be enhanced by adaptive behaviour of citizens, front-line workers and middle-managers

12. Conclusions • Understanding the ways in which members of the public perceive risk and threat can help you: • Understand and more accurately predict staff behavior • Identify and address staff needs (e.g. information, childcare, etc.) • Inform and change behavior during emergencies and in day-to-day management • Current organisational assumptions about emergency procedures and staff behaviours must be tested and adapted in order to be realistic. • Understanding staff perceptions of the threat is the key to understanding how staff will behave during extreme events. www.kcl.ac.uk/warstudies