*The content of this project is a joint creation by the students of the Spring 2017 ENVS 311 class.
Introduction
There are risks all around us, but some are more apparent than others. The risk associated with touching a hot pan fresh out of the oven is instinctually and universally known, while the risk of forgoing sunscreen for an afternoon is not as immediate or visible in the short term. The risks that come along with natural disasters are even more difficult to pinpoint, since they are unpredictable and often occur at a very large scale.
Communicating such a risk is a delicate task. In inciting the public to prepare for a major disaster, public officials must strike a balance between adequately informing people of the serious dangers of such an event, while also increasing people's perception of self-efficacy and capacity, as opposed to only instilling fear and panic. According to the Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM), “when both perceived threat and perceived efficacy are high, danger control processes are initiated” (Witte 1992, 338). In the case of natural disasters, which usually imply a high threat due to their scale, the most important thing to focus on would be increasing self-efficacy since “perceived efficacy determines whether danger control processes or fear control processes are initiated, and perceived threat determines the intensity of these responses” (Witte 1992, 340). If someone has high self-efficacy in the face of a high perceived threat such as a natural disaster, they are more likely to accept risk communication messaging and change their attitudes, intentions, or behaviors (Kleinot & Rogers 1982 as cited in Witte 1992). If their self-efficacy is low, fear control processes such as message rejection or the boomerang responses where people do the opposite of what is suggested or logical can occur (Kleinot & Rogers 1982 as cited in Witte 1992). Fear is not necessarily a detrimental aspect of this kind of decision making; rather it’s important that self-efficacy is high so the fear people experience after learning about a threat motivates them to act instead of deters them from action. Therefore, self-efficacy is extremely important to consider when communicating high threat information.
The number of resources people have access to when they are exposed to the threat determines how they will react to risk, and thus a component of self-efficacy. In an article about person-relative-to-event theory, Duval et al. (1999) suggest that “fear-arousing or negative threat appeals predict that increasing levels of threat when resources are appraised as sufficient relative to the magnitude of the threat will increase problem-focused coping” (495). In other words, if people have resources available to help them prepare, a loss framed approach is most effective in promoting action, but if they do not have adequate resources then a loss framed approach will decrease or have no effect on action. For example, if someone who has inadequate resources is shown images of crushed structures and they are told they need to retrofit their house, they may feel demotivated to prepare at all because they feel like they can’t do anything of value. However if someone with adequate resources is shown the same images, they would be motivated to retrofit their house.
Another component of processing threat messages is described in the Protective Action Decision Model (PADM) (Lindell and Perry 2012). Based on PADM, the flow of taking protective action goes through these five questions of perception, identification, and assessment of risk: (1) Is there a real threat that I need to pay attention to? (2) Do I need to take protective action? (3) What can be done to achieve protection? (4) What is the best method of protection? And (5) Does protective action need to be taken now? If they do not or cannot arrive at a solid answer for any of the above, these questions will be asked: (1) What information do I need to answer my question? (2) Where and how can I obtain this information? (3) Do I need the information now? The PADM illustrates the importance of obtaining information before and during a threat in order to fully process and react to the situation.
Although preparation is extremely important, it can only be done before a disaster. Afterwards, people have to rely on what human and material capital they already have, and come up with creative solutions if they are lacking anything. In fact, in both a case study of the days following Hurricane Katrina (Rodriguez et al. 2006) as well as the evacuation of Manhattan (Kendra et al. 2003), there were examples of both emergent prosocial behavior as well as the necessity for improvisation. Whether it was a hotel chain shipping food to the New Orleans guests from other hotel branches or the US Coast Guard commandeering any and all boats available to evacuate people, both individuals, small groups, and organizations came together with creative solutions to address massive problems. Baker and Refsgaard (2007) emphasize this need for multi-scale coordination, but also highlight the importance of local scale self-reliance before outside assistance can come help. Multi-scale coordination can in part be achieved by citizens getting involved in participatory planning, but also practicing those plans before they need to be put into action (Baker and Refsgaard 2007).
Our institution, Lewis & Clark College, is situated in Portland, Oregon. Portland lies inland of the Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ), which can produce devastating earthquakes registering over 9.0 on the Richter scale. Since the last earthquake that occurred on the CSZ occurred before written records were kept in the Pacific Northwest, there is no earthquake culture and therefore Oregon is not prepared for an event of this magnitude (Oregon Resilience Plan 2013). In line with the literature presented above about scale-matching, the Oregon Seismic Safety Policy Advisory Commission (OSSPAC) has recommended that communities begin to formulate their own plans for survival (Oregon Resilience Plan 2013). With this in mind, our class mapped the communities surrounding both our own college campus as well as five others in the Portland metropolitan area to understand potential vulnerabilities. According to the Portland 2012 Vulnerability Analysis, vulnerable populations are generally renters rather than homeowners, communities of color, or residents who lack college degrees and/or have lower incomes. We found that the community surrounding Lewis & Clark is actually in good shape: the neighbors surrounding us generally own single family homes, are well educated, and white. In terms of the person-relative-to-event theory, this could put neighbors in a good place in terms of preparing in response to risk: they most likely have the resources to prepare, so theoretically once they know more about the impending earthquake, they could do something to address it and engage in problem-focused coping.
Kendra et al. (2003) asked an important question that helped shape the format of our outreach project, after describing the emergent improvisational behavior but also stressing the importance of planning: “What preplanned steps might be taken to facilitate such new organized behavior that might emerge?” In light of the scholarship presented above, we came up with three goals for our outreach project, which included an informational open house as well as a skills-based clinic: 1) Impart important and relevant information about the earthquake itself and expected impacts, 2) Motivate people to seek out what they lack and take some steps toward individual preparation 3) Empower people by uncovering their own latent skills and teaching the importance of improvisation.