Government weather warnings are often ineffective due to numerous factors not considered in their design. These factors include successfully reaching the target audience, the credibility of the warning source, differences in expert and public risk perceptions, and the social processes involved. More effective warnings would comprehensively address these issues and have a centralized warning system. This would help ensure warnings are received, trusted, properly interpreted according to risk, and can ultimately save more lives.
2. Government warnings for weather and natural disasters are
often ineffective. This is due to numerous factors, most of
which are not taken into consideration when formulating or
designing the warning, and contribute to the overall
ineffectiveness of the warning. These factors include:
successfully reaching the target audience (penetrating their
normal activities so that the warning is received), credibility
of the source issuing the warning, the inherent conflict
between experts and the general populace, differences in risk
perception, and the complexities of the social process.
Design formulations that address these issues and that could
produce more effective warnings are outlined. If these design
deficiencies are addressed and if a more centralized approach
to warnings is implemented, government warnings may
become more effective and ultimately save more lives.
3. Reaching the Target Audience
Perceived Credibility of the Source
Conflicts between Experts and the Target
Audience
Risk Perception and the Social Process
4. One of the most important factors in warning the
target audience (all people within the defined
geographical risk zone) is that the warning is
actually received by those individuals.
The ability of the warning to “penetrate a person’s
normal activities” is dependent on what those
activities are and the time of day (Barnes 1143).
If the warning is never received, no action is taken
and the people are left exposed.
5. Insuring that the warning is actually received by the
target audience is further aggravated by a lack of
centralization in issuing warnings.
Currently, "public warning practices are
decentralized across different governments and the
private sector. Uneven preparedness to issue
warnings exists across local communities; hence,
people are unevenly protected”(Sorenson 119).
The result is that those who would normally receive
a warning don’t because of government failings.
6. Once the message is actually received by the intended
recipients, people will automatically seek confirmation
of the information.
“It is important that people do receive confirmation; if
they do not, the chance they will disregard the message
is increased” (McGinley 155).
A centralized government body that issues a consistent
message across all mediums of communication is
paramount to effective warnings, as it extends the reach,
and therefore the likelihood, of reaching the intended
recipients, while also providing confirmation
reinforcement.
7. Once the warning penetrates to the people, the people
must believe and trust the source of the warning before
they will act.
“Research has shown that credibility of a message
source is directly related to effectiveness and persuasion
of the message” (Lirtzman and Shuv-Ami 707).
Weather warnings are overwhelmingly issued by local
government agencies. Unfortunately, government
agencies do not “achieve the highest credibility” among
many individuals (Lirtzman and Shuv-Ami 707).
8. This is especially true among ethnic minorities and poor
people, who have been evidenced to have a delay in
warning responses due to a lack of perceived credibility
in local officials (Drabek 518). Poorer families are also
“more isolated socially, so the informal systems
[confirmation reinforcement of the message via social
connections] that are so much a part of
the warning process are less robust” (Drabek 518).
Consequently, they are “more likely to be left in areas of
high risk”, as they are more likely to live in “trailer
parks or other types of housing that are more vulnerable
either because of location or structural integrity or both”
(Drabek 518).
9. Until more credence and trust is apportioned to the
government, many will fail to be persuaded into
action and they will continue to suffer the
consequences.
A more centralized approach by those issuing
warnings may help alleviate this problem, as it
would help solve the problem of unequal coverage,
an inequality which is a likely culprit for much of
the mistrust people place in the government and its
warnings.
10. Once you get the target audience to give credence
to the source of the warning, interpretation of the
warning may conflict with what the warning was
intended to convey.
Often, what the experts assume will cause action is
not the case. There are differences in perception of
what’s at stake. Different weight is given to risks
and outcomes.
11. “Intuitive risk perception places higher concern for low-probability,
high-consequence risks than for high-probability,
low-consequence risks” (Renn and Levine
176).
Therefore, risk communicators have to face the problem
of the “intrinsic conflict between the perspectives of the
scientific community and the public in general” (Renn
and Levine 176).
While the expert scientific community may be baffled
by the public’s preponderance for concern of the
improbable, they must nonetheless keep this
characteristic in mind when formulating the warning, so
that the most probable and realistic dangers are
internalized by the target audience.
12. Once the warning penetrates the target audience, is
accepted from the source, and the intended
probability is internalized, risk communicators must
be prepared for the initial response of the audience,
which is denial.
“The first principle in understanding disaster
warning responses is to recognize explicitly that the
initial response to any warning is denial” (Drabek
515). This denial is the beginning the social process.
13. People are rarely alone when they receive a warning.
“So it is groups, not individuals that actually process
most disaster warnings. And, as with everything else
they confront, rarely is there an immediate consensus as
to what should be done, if anything. So beyond denial,
there is debate” (Drabek 516).
To limit, if not eliminate debate, warnings must be
explicit. “When disaster warning messages are unclear
or imprecise, people demonstrate incredible creativity at
interpreting the information so as to minimize their
perception of risk” (Drabek 519).
14. While already combatting denial and unintended
interpretations, risk communicators must also factor in
the variable nature of the target audience ,which may
exist on a wide spectrum, as well as the accompanying
social constraints associated with each end of the
spectrum.
When presented with a warning the target audience will
be presented with choices: how and when to act, if to act
at all. There may be a range of choices, “but the range of
choices that are perceived as being available… are
constrained by social experience and the emergent
circumstances of the moment. Responses
to disaster warnings, like other life conditions, are
patterned by invisible webs of constraint” (Drabek 517).
15. While the above issues cannot be entirely
eliminated, their detrimental effects can be limited
by a strategically formulated warning.
Begin by knowing your audience. The warning
“must be consistent with the person’s attitudes and
beliefs, or sufficiently persuasive to change them
and to motivate the person to carry out the directed
behavior (i.e comply with the warning)” (Wogalter,
DeJoy, and Laughery 13).
16. Issues such as competence (intellectual ability,
language and/or reading abilities) must also be taken
into consideration (Laughery and Hammond 10).
Improved forecasting and widely available
information will be of little use if the target
audience does not understand the warnings
provided, do not perceive themselves as vulnerable
to the threat, or do not know how to best avoid the
threat (Sheridan 3).
17. Acknowledging that there is variability in the target
audience is vital. When designing the warning,
design with the low-end extreme in mind; if you
design for the average you miss half your audience
(Laughery and Hammond 10).
The recipients must recognize themselves as the
intended target audience and understand the
necessary behaviors required of them to adequately
and appropriately respond to the warning.
18. To maximize such adaptive behaviors (the ability to respond
quickly and appropriately) of the target audience it is
necessary to address more complex criteria. Drabek (519)
states that addressing the following seven questions has
been shown to illicit the most adaptive behaviors:
1. Who is issuing the warning?
2. What is threatening?
3. What exact geographical area is threatened?
4. When is it coming?
5. How probable is the event?
6. Are there high risk locations, such as people in
automobiles, that require special actions?
7. What specific protective actions should be taken?
19. Formulating a warning that incorporates all of these
elements is a formidable task. Until there is a more
centralized government body to monitor and issue
warnings “the design and implementation of an
effective community disaster warning system
remains only a dream in too many places” (Drabek
519).
20. The current problems affecting the effectiveness of
government weather warnings will continue until issues
such as successfully reaching the target audience,
perceived credibility of the source, the conflict between
experts and the public, differences in risk perception,
and the complexities of the social process are addressed.
A centralized government approach to issuing warnings,
one that takes into account the issues enumerated above,
is vital to the effectiveness of weather warnings. Such
an approach will create a warning system that
successfully reaches more people, and saves more lives:
the ultimate purpose of the warning.
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