Communicating Imminent Risk

Abstract

Warning research has identified people’s major information sources as environmental cues, social cues, and social warnings from authorities, news media, and peers. Social sources are differentiated by expertise, trustworthiness, and responsibility for providing protection. Warning messages are most likely to produce appropriate protective actions if they provide information receivers need to understand the threat, expected time of impact, affected (and safe) areas, appropriate protective actions, and sources to contact for additional information and assistance. Such information produces situational risk perceptions that can be characterized in term of expected casualties, damage, and disruption to the community in general and to one’s family in particular. People’s choices of response actions can be frustrated by situational inhibitors or enhanced by situational facilitators that arise from their physical, social, and household contexts.