North American Cities at Risk: Household Responses to Environmental Hazards

Abstract

This chapter updates Lindell and Perry’s (Environ Behav 32(4):590–630, 2000) review by summarizing the results of ten more recent North American studies on earthquake hazard adjustment and adding 16 studies on flood, hurricane, tornado, and volcano hazard adjustment. This research indicates that risk perceptions are consistently related to the adoption of hazard adjustments, but people’s perceptions of stakeholders and hazard adjustments are also relevant and deserve greater attention. There is considerable evidence that hazard experience increases hazard adjustment adoption, but hazard proximity and hazard intrusiveness also appear to play significant roles and should be a topic of additional research. Finally, demographic variables continue to be unreliable predictors of hazard adjustment adoption but should receive continuing attention to assess their effects on risk perceptions, stakeholder perceptions and hazard adjustment perceptions, as well as hazard experience, hazard proximity, and hazard intrusiveness.