Evacuees’ information sources and reentry decision making in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike

Chih-Chun Lin (), Laura Siebeneck, Michael Lindell (), Carla Prater, Hao-Che Wu and Shih-Kai Huang

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2014, vol. 70, issue 1, 865-882

Abstract: In the aftermath of a hurricane, local emergency managers need to communicate reentry plans to households that might be scattered over multiple counties or states. To better understand evacuees’ households’ reliance on different information sources at the time they decided to return home, this study collected data on reentry after Hurricane Ike. The results from a survey of 340 evacuating households indicated that there was low compliance with official reentry plans and that none of the information sources produced greater compliance with official reentry plans. Nonetheless, there were significant changes in the utilization of different sources of emergency information over the course of an evacuation but local news media remained the most common sources throughout the event. There also were significant differences in the relative importance of different sources of reentry information, with people relying most on information from peers. In summary, local authorities need to identify more effective ways to communicate with evacuees that have relocated to distant communities and to motivate them to comply with official reentry plans. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Keywords: Evacuation reentry; Hurricane Ike; Risk areas; Information sources (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11069-013-0853-1

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