Progression of hurricane evacuation-related dynamic decision-making with information processing

Abstract

Conventional evacuation studies typically do not gauge the development of participants’ certainty about evacuation-related decisions with the updates in the information provided to them. This study uses an online survey that provides three kinds of progressively varied information about the current status of a hypothetical hurricane for five days leading to its landfall and collects respondents’ certainty of their situational comprehension and evacuation-related decisions each day. Most participants (84%) made a final decision (60% evacuate) after seeing information of just one day (four days before the landfall), indicating a tendency of swift decision-making. Modeling shows that the time spent looking at information, especially uncertainty cone forecast maps, positively influences the understanding of the hurricane’s status, which in turn helps in increasing the certainty of making evacuation-related decisions, with an increasing temporal effect. This study contributes to the understanding of the public perception of information and its association with evacuation-related decision-making.