Centre for Health Research, School of Medicine, Western Sydney University, Campbelltown, Sydney, Australia.
Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre, Melbourne, Australia.
BMC Psychol. 2017 Apr 26;5(1):13. doi: 10.1186/s40359-017-0182-3.
Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) was developed by Rogers in 1975, to describe how individuals are motivated to react in a self-protective way towards a perceived health threat. Rogers expected the use of PMT to diversify over time, which has proved true over four decades. The purpose of this paper is to explore how PMT can be used and expanded to inform and improve public safety strategies in natural hazards. As global climate change impacts on the Australian environment, natural hazards seem to be increasing in scale and frequency, and Emergency Services' public education campaigns have necessarily escalated to keep pace with perceived public threat. Of concern, is that the awareness-preparedness gap in residents' survival plans is narrowing disproportionately slowly compared to the magnitude of resources applied to rectify this trend. Practical applications of adaptable social theory could be used to help resolve this dilemma.
PMT has been used to describe human behaviour in individuals, families, and the parent-child unit. It has been applied to floods in Europe and wildfire and earthquake in the United States. This paper seeks to determine if an application of PMT can be useful for achieving other-directed human protection across a novel demographic spectrum in natural hazards, specifically, animal owners and emergency responders in bushfire emergencies. These groups could benefit from such an approach: owners to build and fortify their response- and self-efficacy, and to help translate knowledge into safer behaviour, and responders to gain a better understanding of a diverse demographic with animal ownership as its common denominator, and with whom they will be likely to engage in contemporary natural hazard management. Mutual collaboration between these groups could lead to a synergy of reciprocated response efficacy, and safer, less traumatic outcomes. Emergency services' community education programs have made significant progress over the last decade, but public safety remains suboptimal while the magnitude of the awareness-preparedness gap persists. This paper examines an expanded, other-directed application of PMT to expand and enhance safer mitigation and response behaviour strategies for communities threatened by bushfire, which may ultimately help save human life.
保护动机理论（PMT）是由罗杰斯于 1975 年提出的，用于描述个体如何出于自我保护的动机对感知到的健康威胁做出反应。罗杰斯预计，PMT 的使用会随着时间的推移而多样化，这一预测在四十多年后得到了证实。本文旨在探讨如何使用和扩展 PMT，为自然灾害中的公共安全策略提供信息并加以改进。随着全球气候变化对澳大利亚环境的影响，自然灾害的规模和频率似乎在增加，应急服务部门的公众教育活动也必然随之升级，以跟上公众感知到的威胁步伐。令人担忧的是，与用于纠正这一趋势的资源规模相比，居民生存计划中的意识-准备差距缩小的速度不成比例地缓慢。适应性社会理论的实际应用可以用来帮助解决这一困境。
PMT 已被用于描述个体、家庭和亲子单位中的人类行为。它已被应用于欧洲的洪水、美国的野火和地震。本文试图确定 PMT 的应用是否可以用于在自然灾害中实现针对新型人口统计学群体的他人导向的人类保护，特别是在丛林火灾紧急情况下的动物主人和应急响应者。这些群体可以从这种方法中受益：主人可以增强他们的应对和自我效能感，并帮助将知识转化为更安全的行为，而响应者则可以更好地了解拥有动物这一共性的多样化人口统计学群体，并且与他们在当代自然灾害管理中可能会有更多的互动。这些群体之间的相互协作可能会产生互惠的应对效能感的协同作用，并带来更安全、创伤更小的结果。在过去十年中，应急服务部门的社区教育计划取得了重大进展，但在公众安全仍不理想且意识-准备差距持续存在的情况下，这些进展还远远不够。本文探讨了将 PMT 扩展应用于受丛林火灾威胁的社区，以扩展和增强更安全的缓解和应对策略，这最终可能有助于挽救人类生命。
