Mapping the shadow of experience of extreme weather events

Howe, Peter D.; Boudet, Hilary; Leiserowitz, Anthony; Maibach, Edward

doi:10.1007/s10584-014-1253-6

Cited by 87 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 30 publications

(30 reference statements)

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“…Similarly, whilst there is not an extensive assessment of the spatial attributes of risk perception within the wider naturalhazard literature, consideration has been given to proximity or real distance from the source of the hazard, including volcanoes, (57)(58)(59) air quality, (60)(61)(62) earthquakes, (63)(64)(65) debris flows, (66) hurricanes, (39,67) groundwater pollution, (68,69) and hurricane, tornado, and drought. (70) More specifically, in the context of a potential volcanic hazard, Perry et al (59) do not find any significant relationship between real distance and perception, although Peacock et al, (39) in relation to hurricane-risk perception, find proximity to wind hazard zone to be a significant determinant. Interestingly, a study by Trumbo et al (71) exploring the effect of proximity on hurricane outlook and optimistic bias (i.e., affective components of risk perception) found distance to have only a small influence and similarly Suls et al (72) found participants living closer to a tornado reported more vulnerability in a study about optimism following tornado disasters.…”

Section: Risk Perception and Proximitymentioning

confidence: 98%

“…In relation to the second approach to the analysis of the spatial components of risk, creating maps of data from survey questionnaires (70) facilitates the aggregation of multiple individual respondents' risk perception (of natural or technological hazard sources) in order to discover whether the data's graphic visualization and analysis demonstrate any discernible spatial patterns. It can also assist with analysis of whether the aggregate representation of community perception of a hazard risk can usefully inform future hazard-risk management.…”

Section: Spatial Representation Of Survey Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In flood‐risk perception studies, proximity to hazard source has also been considered in relation to flash floods, and river flooding; however, such spatial attributes, insofar as they concern flood‐risk perception, have been underresearched in the general flood‐risk related literature. Similarly, whilst there is not an extensive assessment of the spatial attributes of risk perception within the wider natural‐hazard literature, consideration has been given to proximity or real distance from the source of the hazard, including volcanoes, air quality, earthquakes, debris flows, hurricanes, groundwater pollution, and hurricane, tornado, and drought . More specifically, in the context of a potential volcanic hazard, Perry et al .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Impact of Perceived Flood Exposure on Flood‐Risk Perception: The Role of Distance

et al. 2016

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Natural hazards, such as major flood events, are occurring with increasing frequency and inflicting increasing levels of financial damages upon affected communities. The experience of such major flood events has brought about a significant change in attitudes to flood-risk management, with a shift away from built engineering solutions alone towards a more multifaceted approach. Europe's experience with damaging flood episodes provided the impetus for the introduction of the European Floods Directive, requiring the establishment of flood-risk management plans at the river-basin scale. The effectiveness of such plans, focusing on prevention, protection, and preparedness, is dependent on adequate flood awareness and preparedness, and this is related to perception of flood risk. This is an important factor in the design and assessment of flood-risk management. Whilst there is a modern body of literature exploring flood perception issues, there have been few examples that explore its spatial manifestations. Previous literature has examined perceived and real distance to a hazard source (such as a river, nuclear facility, landfill, or incinerator, etc.), whereas this article advances the literature by including an objectively assessed measure of distance to a perceived flood zone, using a cognitive mapping methodology. The article finds that distance to the perceived flood zone (perceived flood exposure) is a crucial factor in determining flood-risk perception, both the cognitive and affective components. Furthermore, we find an interesting phenomenon of misperception among respondents. The article concludes by discussing the implications for flood-risk management.

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Section: Risk Perception and Proximitymentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Spatial Representation Of Survey Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Impact of Perceived Flood Exposure on Flood‐Risk Perception: The Role of Distance

et al. 2016

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“…It seems unlikely that climate models will be able to provide the local-scale, specific, reliable, and trusted information required for most private adaptation decisions. Instead, direct experience of weather events is likely to be an important information source, with several studies suggesting a link between experience of weather anomalies and stated belief in climate change (Howe et al, 2014;McCright et al, 2014;Kaufmann et al, 2017). Therefore, how well people learn from experience in nonstationary, stochastic environments has important implications for the rate of adaptation and the economic costs associated with climate change.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning, Adaptation, and Weather in a Changing Climate

Moore

2017

Clim. Change Econ.

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Climate change will push the weather experienced by people affected outside the bounds of historic norms, resulting in unprecedented weather events. But people and firms should be able to learn from their experience of unusual weather and adjust their expectations about the climate distribution accordingly. The efficiency of this learning process gives an upper bound on the rate at which adaptation can occur and is therefore important in determining the adjustment costs associated with climate change. Learning about climate change requires people to infer the state of a changing probability distribution (climate) given annual draws from that distribution (weather). If the climate is stationary, it can be inferred from the distribution of historic weather observations, but if it is changing, the inference problem is more challenging. This paper first develops different learning models, including an efficient hierarchical Bayesian model in which the observer learns whether the climate is changing and, if it is, the functional form that describes that change. I contrast this with a less efficient but simpler learning model in which observers react to past changes but are unable to anticipate future changes. I propose a general metric of learning costs based on the average, discounted squared difference between beliefs and the true climate state and use climate model output to calculate this metric for two emissions scenarios, finding substantial relative differences between learning models and scenarios but small absolute values. Geographic differences arise from spatial patterns of warming rates and natural weather variability (noise). Finally, I present results from an experimental game simulating the adaptation decision, which suggests that people are able to learn about a trending climate and respond proactively.

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“…Although not reviewed here, it should be noted that there is complementary research on how people's experiences, including with extreme weather, influence their climate change risk perceptions and behaviors (84)(85)(86). …”

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confidence: 99%

Explicating Experience: Development of a Valid Scale of Past Hazard Experience for Tornadoes

Demuth¹

2018

Risk Analysis

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People's past experiences with a hazard theoretically influence how they approach future risks. Yet, past hazard experience has been conceptualized and measured in wide-ranging, often simplistic, ways, resulting in mixed findings about its relationship with risk perception. This study develops a scale of past hazard experiences, in the context of tornadoes, that is content and construct valid. A conceptual definition was developed, a set of items were created to measure one's most memorable and multiple tornado experiences, and the measures were evaluated through two surveys of the public who reside in tornado-prone areas. Four dimensions emerged of people's most memorable experience, reflecting their awareness of the tornado risk that day, their personalization of the risk, the intrusive impacts on them personally, and impacts experienced vicariously through others. Two dimensions emerged of people's multiple experiences, reflecting common types of communication received and negative emotional responses. These six dimensions are novel in that they capture people's experience across the timeline of a hazard as well as intangible experiences that are both direct and indirect. The six tornado experience dimensions were correlated with tornado risk perceptions measured as cognitive-affective and as perceived probability of consequences. The varied experience-risk perception results suggest that it is important to understand the nuances of these concepts and their relationships. This study provides a foundation for future work to continue explicating past hazard experience, across different risk contexts, and for understanding its effect on risk assessment and responses.

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Mapping the shadow of experience of extreme weather events

Cited by 87 publications

References 30 publications

The Impact of Perceived Flood Exposure on Flood‐Risk Perception: The Role of Distance

The Impact of Perceived Flood Exposure on Flood‐Risk Perception: The Role of Distance

Learning, Adaptation, and Weather in a Changing Climate

Explicating Experience: Development of a Valid Scale of Past Hazard Experience for Tornadoes

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