Taylor Andrea, Summers Barbara, Domingos Samuel, Garrett Natalie, Yeomans Sophie
Centre for Decision Research, Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK.
Sustainability Research Institute, School for Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK.
Risk Anal. 2024 May;44(5):1237-1253. doi: 10.1111/risa.14222. Epub 2023 Sep 24.
Meteorological services are increasingly moving away from issuing weather warnings based on the exceedance of meteorological thresholds (e.g., windspeed), toward risk-based (or "impact-based") approaches. The UK Met Office's National Severe Weather Warning Service has been a pioneer of this approach, issuing yellow, amber, and red warnings based on an integrated evaluation of information about the likelihood of occurrence and potential impact severity. However, although this approach is inherently probabilistic, probabilistic information does not currently accompany public weather warning communications. In this study, we explored whether providing information about the likelihood and impact severity of forecast weather affected subjective judgments of likelihood, severity, concern, trust in forecast, and intention to take protective action. In a mixed-factorial online experiment, 550 UK residents from 2 regions with different weather profiles were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 Warning Format conditions (Color-only, Text, Risk Matrix) and presented with 3 warnings: high-probability/moderate-impact (amber HPMI); low-probability/high-impact (amber); high-probability/high-impact (red). Amongst those presented with information about probability and impact severity, red high-likelihood/high-impact warnings elicited the strongest ratings on all dependent variables, followed by amber HPMI warnings. Amber low-likelihood/high-impact warnings elicited the lowest perceived likelihood, severity, concern, trust, and intention to take protective responses. Taken together, this indicates that UK residents are sensitive to probabilistic information for amber warnings, and that communicating that severe events are unlikely to occur reduces perceived risk, trust in the warning, and behavioral intention, even though potential impacts could be severe. We discuss the practical implications of this for weather warning communication.
气象服务越来越多地从基于气象阈值（如风速）的超标情况发布天气预警，转向基于风险（或“基于影响”）的方法。英国气象局的国家严重天气预警服务一直是这种方法的先驱，根据对事件发生可能性和潜在影响严重程度信息的综合评估发布黄色、琥珀色和红色预警。然而，尽管这种方法本质上是概率性的，但目前公众气象预警通信中并未附带概率信息。在本研究中，我们探讨了提供有关预报天气的可能性和影响严重程度的信息是否会影响对可能性、严重程度、关注度、对预报的信任以及采取保护行动的意图的主观判断。在一项混合因子在线实验中，来自两个天气状况不同地区的550名英国居民被随机分配到三种预警格式条件（仅颜色、文本、风险矩阵）中的一种，并收到三条预警：高概率/中等影响（琥珀色高概率/中等影响）；低概率/高影响（琥珀色）；高概率/高影响（红色）。在那些收到有关概率和影响严重程度信息的人中，红色高可能性/高影响预警在所有因变量上的评分最高，其次是琥珀色高概率/中等影响预警。琥珀色低可能性/高影响预警引发的感知可能性、严重程度、关注度、信任度以及采取保护措施的意图最低。综合来看，这表明英国居民对琥珀色预警的概率信息很敏感，并且传达严重事件不太可能发生会降低感知风险、对预警的信任以及行为意图，即使潜在影响可能很严重。我们讨论了这对天气预警通信的实际影响。
