LeClerc Jared, Joslyn Susan
University of Washington, Dept. of Psychology, Box 351525, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
Risk Anal. 2015 Mar;35(3):385-95. doi: 10.1111/risa.12336. Epub 2015 Jan 27.
Despite improvements in forecasting extreme weather events, noncompliance with weather warnings among the public remains a problem. Although there are likely many reasons for noncompliance with weather warnings, one important factor might be people's past experiences with false alarms. The research presented here explores the role of false alarms in weather-related decision making. Over a series of trials, participants used an overnight low temperature forecast and advice from a decision aid to decide whether to apply salt treatment to a town's roads to prevent icy conditions or take the risk of withholding treatment, which resulted in a large penalty when freezing temperatures occurred. The decision aid gave treatment recommendations, some of which were false alarms, i.e., treatment was recommended but observed temperatures were above freezing. The rate at which the advice resulted in false alarms was manipulated between groups. Results suggest that very high and very low false alarm rates led to inferior decision making, but that lowering the false alarm rate slightly did not significantly affect compliance or decision quality. However, adding a probabilistic uncertainty estimate in the forecasts improved both compliance and decision quality. These findings carry implications about how weather warnings should be communicated to the public.
尽管在极端天气事件的预报方面有所改进，但公众不遵守天气预警的情况仍然是个问题。虽然不遵守天气预警可能有很多原因，但一个重要因素可能是人们过去对误报的经历。本文介绍的研究探讨了误报在与天气相关的决策中的作用。在一系列试验中，参与者利用夜间低温预报和决策辅助工具的建议，来决定是否对城镇道路进行撒盐处理以防止结冰，或者冒险不进行处理，而当出现冰冻温度时不进行处理会导致高额罚款。决策辅助工具给出了处理建议，其中一些是误报，即建议进行处理，但实际观测温度高于冰点。建议导致误报的比率在不同组之间进行了操控。结果表明，非常高和非常低的误报率都会导致较差的决策，但稍微降低误报率并不会显著影响遵守情况或决策质量。然而，在预报中添加概率不确定性估计会提高遵守情况和决策质量。这些发现对如何向公众传达天气预警具有启示意义。
