People's Reactions to Emergency Warning
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Date
1982-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Disaster Research Center
Abstract
Description
One of the earliest research topics in the disaster area was the issuance of emergency warnings and the reactions to them. This is understandable. If persons can be warned of a threat, they can take preventive, mitigatory, precautionary, and protective measures, including evacuating themselves out of an endangered area. Warnings can obviously be useful it not necessary for adaptive behavior to environmental changes –natural or manmade – which put life, property, group routines, and the ecological balance in peril. It is not therefore surprising that when social and behavioral scientists started to do research on disasters about 30 years ago, many of the studies focused on the question of disaster warnings and reactions of potential victims to them. This interest has persisted over the years.
Keywords
disaster warning, victims, enviromental changes, emergency warnings