Improving Evacuation Compliance through Control: Implications for Emergency Management Policy and Disaster Communications

Abstract

Federal and local emergency management agencies and policy makers often ask: Why do individuals refuse to leave their homes when emergency evacuations are mandated during lifethreatening natural disasters? In three experimental studies, the current research establishes that during a natural disaster, individuals become aware of their mortality. Existential anxiety is high and a need for control is instantiated. This makes following the directive to evacuate relatively less appealing. If, however, individuals can meet their need for control while in the process of making the evacuation decision (e.g., choice of shelter), the likelihood of evacuating increases.In light of increasing concerns related to global climate change, terrorist threats, pandemics and other natural disasters, calls for more interdisciplinary work in understanding human decision making in emergency situations have been made. The current work has timely implications for emergency management agencies, policy makers, and those required to communicate during natural disasters.

Double Helix Phenomenology on Digital Adaptive Leadership and Innovation Management’s Practice-Perspective During Pandemic

“…This is important, the encouragement of compliance with regulations/policies is a challenge for the community and PUJK to immediately comply because there is an additional burden that needs to be done. For PUJKs, the relaxation policy is sufficient to affect liquidity or (Atalay & Meloy, 2020;Howlett, 2018;Weaver, 2014). On the other hand, the acceleration of policy implementation is an effort to maintain financial system stability as part of the policy mix with the government through the National Economic Recovery Program (PEN).…”

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“…Several studies replaced the standard mortality-salience prompts with climate-crisis-salience prompts and demonstrated that thinking of climate crisis also tends to promote ethnocentrism (Uhl et al, 2017), increase aggression toward out-groups (Fritsche et al, 2012), and elevate levels of anxiety-compensatory consumerism (Akil et al, 2018). Likewise, thinking of impending natural disasters directly increases death anxiety, which people often attempt to manage by engaging in behaviors that promote the illusion of agency at the expense of real safety, such as ignoring evacuation warnings in favor of staying in houses directly in the path of a hurricane (Atalay & Meloy, 2020). Such effects hold true even among people who do not espouse environmental values, which shows that one need not be an environmentalist or even, necessarily, believe in climate crisis to be subconsciously affected by eco-anxiety (Akil et al, 2018).…”

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“…For example, people in general like to make their own decisions. If individuals are provided with a sense of control, they are more likely to comply with regulations (Atalay and Meloy, 2020 ). Therefore, developing plans for flexible accommodation for the target population can better ensure compliance under emergency context, but the choice should not be overloaded to create confusion (Gopalan and Pirog, 2017 ).…”