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Older adults are more susceptible to adverse health outcomes during and after a disaster compared with their younger counterparts. Ageing-in-place organisations such as senior centres and Villages provide social services and programming for older adults and may support older adults’ resilience to disasters. This study examines the role of ageing-in-place organisations in building disaster resilience for older adults. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 14 ageing-in-place organisation leaders in King County, Washington in the United States of America. The sample included representatives of five government-run senior centres, seven non-profit senior centres and two Villages. Interviews were audio-recorded and professionally transcribed. We used a combined inductive and deductive approach to code and thematically analyse the data. Ageing-in-place organisation leadership recognise disasters as a threat to older adults’ health and safety, and they see opportunities to provide disaster-related support for older adults, though the type and extent of participation in resilience-building activities reflected each organisation's unique local context. Organisations participate in a variety of disaster-related activities, though respondents emphasised the importance of collaborative and communication-focused efforts. Findings suggest that ageing-in-place organisations may be best equipped to support older adults’ disaster resilience by serving as a trusted source of disaster-related information and providing input on the appropriateness of disaster plans and messages for the unique needs of older adults ageing-in-place.

Believing action to reduce the risks of climate change is both possible (self-efficacy) and effective (response efficacy) is essential to motivate and sustain risk mitigation efforts, according to current risk communication theory. Although the public recognizes the dangers of climate change, and is deluged with lists of possible mitigative actions, little is known about public efficacy beliefs in the context of climate change. Prior efficacy studies rely on conflicting constructs and measures of efficacy, and links between efficacy and risk management actions are muddled. As a result, much remains to learn about how laypersons think about the ease and effectiveness of potential mitigative actions. To bring clarity and inform risk communication and management efforts, we investigate how people think about efficacy in the context of climate change risk management by analyzing unprompted and prompted beliefs from two national surveys (N = 405, N = 1,820). In general, respondents distinguish little between effective and ineffective climate strategies. While many respondents appreciate that reducing fossil fuel use is an effective risk mitigation strategy, overall assessments reflect persistent misconceptions about climate change causes, and uncertainties about the effectiveness of risk mitigation strategies. Our findings suggest targeting climate change risk communication and management strategies to (1) address gaps in people's existing mental models of climate action, (2) leverage existing public understanding of both potentially effective mitigation strategies and the collective action dilemma at the heart of climate change action, and (3) take into account ideologically driven reactions to behavior change and government action framed as climate action.

A growing body of research demonstrates that believing action to reduce the risks of climate change is both possible (self-efficacy) and effective (response efficacy) is essential to motivate and sustain risk mitigation efforts. Despite this potentially critical role of efficacy beliefs, measures and their use vary wildly in climate change risk perception and communication research, making it hard to compare and learn from efficacy studies. To address this problem and advance our understanding of efficacy beliefs, this article makes three contributions. First, we present a theoretically motivated approach to measuring climate change mitigation efficacy, in light of diverse proposed, perceived, and previously researched strategies. Second, we test this in two national survey samples (Amazon's Mechanical Turk N = 405, GfK Knowledge Panel N = 1,820), demonstrating largely coherent beliefs by level of action and discrimination between types of efficacy. Four additive efficacy scales emerge: personal self-efficacy, personal response efficacy, government and collective self-efficacy, and government and collective response efficacy. Third, we employ the resulting efficacy scales in mediation models to test how well efficacy beliefs predict climate change policy support, controlling for specific knowledge, risk perceptions, and ideology, and allowing for mediation by concern. Concern fully mediates the relatively strong effects of perceived risk on policy support, but only partly mediates efficacy beliefs. Stronger government and collective response efficacy beliefs and personal self-efficacy beliefs are both directly and indirectly associated with greater support for reducing the risks of climate change, even after controlling for ideology and causal beliefs about climate change.

The study reported here explores how to enhance the public value of hurricane forecast and warning information by examining the entire warning process. A mental models research approach is applied to address three risk management tasks critical to warnings for extreme weather events: 1) understanding the risk decision and action context for hurricane warnings, 2) understanding the commonalities and conflicts in interpretations of that context and associated risks, and 3) exploring the practical implications of these insights for hurricane risk communication and management. To understand the risk decision and action context, the study develops a decision-focused model of the hurricane forecast and warning system on the basis of results from individual mental models interviews with forecasters from the National Hurricane Center (n = 4) and the Miami–South Florida Weather Forecast Office (n = 4), media broadcasters (n = 5), and public officials (n = 6), as well as a group decision-modeling session with a subset of the forecasters. Comparisons across professionals reveal numerous shared perceptions, as well as some critical differences. Implications for improving extreme weather event forecast and warning systems and risk communication are threefold: 1) promote thinking about forecast and warning decisions as a system, with informal as well as formal elements; 2) evaluate, coordinate, and consider controlling the proliferation of forecast and warning information products; and 3) further examine the interpretation and representation of uncertainty within the hurricane forecast and warning system as well as for users.

Risk communication is about exchanging risk information and opinions, and influences how people perceive and act on risks. This chapter first describes how risk communicators attract people’s attention and present information. Then the chapter explores what influences understanding and acceptance or rejection of messages, with a focus on uncertainty and mental models. Next, the chapter describes how people evaluate and use risk messages and how risk messaging relates to behavioral tendencies and behavioral responses, with an emphasis on choice architecture and habits. Finally, the chapter concludes with a discussion of the importance of matching risk communication goals and methods to audience attributes.

Mental models of health risks are the causal beliefs that comprise one’s inference engines for the interpretation and prediction of health and illness experiences and messages. Mental models of health risks can be parsed into a handful of common elements, including beliefs about causes, consequences, and cures as well as identifying information such as symptoms and timing. Mental models research deriving from a risk and decision analysis framework emphasizes exposure sources and pathways as part of causal thinking as well as how interventions may reduce or increase the risk. Mental models can be developed as a function of one’s goals or the problem in a specific context, rather than as coherent, stable knowledge structures in long-term memory. For this reason they can be piecemeal and inconsistent in the absence of expertise or experience with the risk. Derived often by analogy with more familiar risks, mental models of health risks can lead to effective health behaviors but also to costly inaction or misplaced action. Assessing mental models of hazardous processes can contribute to the design of effective risk communications by identifying the concrete information message recipients need to cope with health risks, thereby making or strengthening common-sense links between risk and action representations. Although a wide variety of research methods are used to investigate mental models, achieving this level of specificity requires attention to substantive details. Researchers are beginning to better understand the interactions between mental models of risk and their social, cultural, and physical contexts, but much remains to explore.

While lauding research progress in risk communication, Roger Kasperson despairs of change in risk communication practices. Advances are nevertheless evident on several fronts, including the development and application of pragmatic and evidence-driven approaches to risk communication design, implementation of new engagement strategies, and efforts to communicate uncertainty. Systematic reviews in risk communication research are starting to appear, and will likely help clarify the lessons to be learned. Progress in these areas suggests building on current momentum by continuing to encourage: (1) systematic reviews of research and trends in risk communication; (2) judgment and decision-making research to inform risk communication design; and (3) integrative risk communication research, across disciplines and application domains.

Central to the precautionary policy is the provision of information about electromagnetic fields (EMF) technology, exposures, potential health risks and exposure management actions to the public. To meet this need at the broadest level, beyond the specific technology foci of previous research, a research project was commissioned as part of Dutch Electromagnetic Fields and Health Research Programme. This study provides an assessment of Dutch EMF information needs from an ensemble of sources by addressing people’s existing ideas and beliefs, using a mental models approach. A summary expert model of influences on and consequences of exposure derived from search of the relevant literature is informed by interviews with 15 scientists and professionals with diverse expertise. Although the professionals characterize the physical characteristics and psychological aspects of exposure to EMF in daily life similarly, there is no consensus regarding potential health effects. Interviews with 12 lay people followed by ...

Risk managers are increasingly interested in incorporating stakeholder beliefs and other human factors into the planning process. Effective risk assessment and management requires understanding perceptions and beliefs of involved stakeholders, and how these beliefs give rise to actions that influence risk management decisions. Formal analyses of risk manager and stakeholder cognitions represent an important first step. Techniques for diagramming stakeholder mental models provide one tool for risk managers to better understand stakeholder beliefs and perceptions concerning risk, and to leverage this new understanding in developing risk management strategies. This article reviews three methodologies for assessing and diagramming stakeholder mental models--decision-analysis-based mental modeling, concept mapping, and semantic web analysis--and assesses them with regard to their ability to address risk manager needs.

An intensive program of 40 years of research has produced various conceptual cognitive and affective approaches to environmental risk perception. In this short review of the most relevant conceptual approaches, appraisal theory is presented as a useful means of integrating cognitive and affective approaches to risk perception. Appraisal theory offers an opportunity to advance our understanding of how environmental risk perception operates in an emotion-specific manner and enables identification of new research directions. Although within other conceptual approaches there are still open research questions, the potential for examining environmental risk perception within appraisal theory has not yet been fully explored. Reviewing current appraisal theoretical models, seven research questions are suggested to structure future research on environmental risk perception.

The risks of unfamiliar technologies are often evaluated by comparing them with the risks of more familiar ones. Such risk comparisons have been criticized for neglecting critical dimensions of risky decisions. In a guide written for the Chemical Manufacturers Association, Covello et al.(1) have summarized these critiques and developed a taxonomy that characterizes possible risk comparisons in terms of their acceptability (or objectionableness). We asked four diverse groups of subjects to judge the acceptability of 14 statements produced by Covello et al. as examples of their categories. We found no correlation between the judgments of acceptability produced by our subjects and those predicted by Covello et al..

We propose a decision-analytic framework, called the mental models approach, for evaluating the impact of risk communications. It employs multiple evaluation methods, including think-aloud protocol analysis, problem solving, and a true-false test that allows respondents to express uncertainty about their answers. The approach is illustrated in empirical comparisons of three brochures about indoor radon.