Public policy experts to evaluate perceptions of disaster risk

The Department of Public Policy (DPP) in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is expanding its homeland security research with a new six-year project to evaluate how people perceive disaster risk and how their perceptions affect preparedness.

Ultimately, the research will help identify citizen and public decision-maker strategies that would be effective in preparing for natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, droughts, and wildfires, says Amy Donahue, associate professor and head of the Department of Public Policy.

A former firefighter herself, Donahue is the principal investigator on the study, “Risk Perceptions, Preferences, and Preparedness,” which is funded by a $566,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Public policy faculty members Mark Robbins and Bill Simonsen are also involved in the project. It is part of a larger research effort, a DHS Center of Excellence on natural disasters, coastal infrastructure, and emergency management that is based at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Jackson State University.

The purpose of the Center is to improve the nation’s capability to deal with natural disasters and to find new approaches to coastal hazard planning, communications, and response.

The public policy investigators at UConn, headed by Robbins, recently finished a complex study for the DHS based on responses from more than 2,600 people.

Using focus groups and telephone calls, it assessed their attitudes and preferences regarding homeland security prevention, detection, and response technologies. It focused on responses to a potential terrorist attack and on how much citizens would be willing to pay in additional taxes for anti-terrorism services.

The new study will measure what people consider and will tolerate when faced with natural disaster preparation, says project manager Candace Fitzpatrick, who received her master’s of public administration degree from the department in 2006 and who worked on the earlier study.

“It will allow us to compare perceptions of risk and associated behavior across different segments of society so that preparedness approaches can be tailored,” she says.

The research will compare the risk perceptions and preparedness actions of coastal and inland residents and decision makers. Citizen responses will be gauged over time, to see whether people change their risk perception and preparedness.

First on the list of DHS topics of interest are natural hazards such as flooding from hurricanes or storm surges.

Among the questions the UConn researchers will ask is how “at risk” people believe they are.

“We are trying to gain a deeper understanding about how citizens understand risks and how they respond to them, by moving beyond existing research,” says Donahue.