Amateur decision-making in avalanche terrain with and without a decision aid: a stated choice survey

Pascal Haegeli (), Wolfgang Haider, Margo Longland and Ben Beardmore

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2010, vol. 52, issue 1, 185-209

Abstract: Avalanches pose a serious threat to recreational backcountry travelers in mountainous terrain. This study explores how the three main amateur user groups of avalanche terrain in western Canada (backcountry skiers, out-of-bound skiers, and snowmobile riders) balance recreational goals with safety concerns when choosing backcountry destinations under varying avalanche conditions. Using a discrete choice experiment (DCE), a stated preference technique, the study first examines the strengths and weaknesses in the decision process of the three amateur groups by comparing their responses with the choice patterns of professional mountain guides. The results show that the decision-making strategies employed by the respective amateur groups vary considerably in their level of complexity and the degree to which avalanche safety considerations are incorporated. Second, we examine the effects of a decision aid that preprocesses the most crucial pieces of avalanche hazard information on the decision preferences of the amateur groups in the DCE. The results show that a relatively simple decision aid can influence the decision-making process considerably and steer users towards more avalanche hazard sensitive behaviour. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Keywords: Decision-making; Avalanche safety; Decision aid; Discrete choice experiment; Choice complexity; Backcountry skiing; Out-of-bounds skiing; Snowmobile riding (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11069-009-9365-4 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:52:y:2010:i:1:p:185-209

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-009-9365-4

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().