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Publication
The effect of likelihood and impact information on public response to severe weather warnings
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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Meteorological services are increasingly moving away from issuing weather warnings
based on the exceedance of meteorological thresholds (e.g., windspeed), toward
risk-based (or “impact-based”) approaches. The UK Met Office’s National Severe
Weather Warning Service has been a pioneer of this approach, issuing yellow, amber,
and red warnings based on an integrated evaluation of information about the likelihood
of occurrence and potential impact severity. However, although this approach
is inherently probabilistic, probabilistic information does not currently accompany
public weather warning communications. In this study, we explored whether providing
information about the likelihood and impact severity of forecast weather affected
subjective judgments of likelihood, severity, concern, trust in forecast, and intention
to take protective action. In a mixed-factorial online experiment, 550 UK residents
from 2 regions with different weather profiles were randomly assigned to 1 of 3
Warning Format conditions (Color-only, Text, Risk Matrix) and presented with 3 warnings:
high-probability/moderate-impact (amber HPMI); low-probability/high-impact
(amber); high-probability/high-impact (red). Amongst those presented with information
about probability and impact severity, red high-likelihood/high-impact warnings
elicited the strongest ratings on all dependent variables, followed by amber HPMI
warnings. Amber low-likelihood/high-impact warnings elicited the lowest perceived
likelihood, severity, concern, trust, and intention to take protective responses. Taken
together, this indicates that UK residents are sensitive to probabilistic information
for amber warnings, and that communicating that severe events are unlikely to occur
reduces perceived risk, trust in the warning, and behavioral intention, even though
potential impacts could be severe. We discuss the practical implications of this for
weather warning communication.
Description
Keywords
Impact based forecasts Risk communication Risk perception Weather risk Weather warnings
Citation
Taylor, A., Summers, B., Domingos, S., Garrett, N., & Yeomans, S. (2023). The effect of likelihood and impact information on public response to severe weather warnings. Risk Analysis: An International Journal, 1. https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.14222
Publisher
Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd