A serendipitous, quasi-natural experiment: earthquake risk perceptions and hazard adjustments among college students

Abstract

Hazard experience has been shown to influence risk perceptions, hazard salience, and the types of hazard adjustments people consider and undertake. Literature exploring the impact of experience on these constructs and decisions is, however, limited, with scholars often disagreeing on what counts as experience and lacking pre-event measures to compare to post-event outcomes. Given the difficulties in both predicting hazard occurrences with the temporal accuracy required to conduct pre-impact assessments close to the event and implementing surveys in a post-disaster environment, pre–post studies of disasters are rare. This study, by serendipity, achieved just this by distributing a survey exploring responses to techna earthquakes by college students in Oklahoma, receiving responses in the period just before and after the largest earthquake in modern Oklahoma history. In line with much of the existing literature, our results show that the Pawnee earthquake had significant impacts on respondents’ risk perceptions and hazard salience. Contrary to other findings, we did not find a relationship between hazard salience and hazard adjustments. Adjustments undertaken were predominately limited to information-seeking measures. Risk perceptions, of note, were more likely to be correlated with adjustment measures after the earthquake. This indicates that risk perceptions prior to the earthquake were not enough to motivate intention to adopt adjustments, but the Pawnee earthquake led those with heightened risk perceptions, along with others that had their risk perceptions positively influenced by the earthquake, to consider adopting hazard adjustments. We suggest that emergency managers use this window to encourage residents to undertake adjustment measures.