Use of online weather information in everyday decision-making by laypeople and implications for communication of weather information

Abstract

Many people use weather reports to plan their activities. Previous studies on this type of decision-making have been concerned primarily with the use of selected pieces of information detached from the context of a full weather report. Therefore, this study contains two areas of focus: (1) factors influencing the amount of information from a full weather report that is used by laypeople for everyday decision-making and (2) how the complexity in information in a full weather report is handled in the decision-making processes. In this qualitative study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 people from Norway. Farmers, exterior painters, tour guides, teachers and students were included in the sample to obtain a fair variance in the number of user situations. Interviews were centred on a multimodal weather report from the online web service www.yr.no. In the present study, a varying amount of information was used by the participants in their decision-making; furthermore, the amount of information used appeared to depend on (1) the importance of the envisaged activity and (2) the suitability of the weather conditions. The amount of information (i.e. complexity) had to be reduced to make a quick decision, which typically was accomplished by (1) choosing a suitable starting point and leaving out evaluations of (2) weather dynamics and (3) forecast uncertainty. Communicating a multiplicity of representations in weather reports appears favourable for enabling the use of different types and amounts of information, such that it allows both quick and more elaborate decision-making processes.