Motivations and Costs Associated with Intention to Take Protective Action across Five Weather Hazards

Protection motivation theory (PMT) has been used to explain the intention to take protective action in response to threats in a variety of fields, most extensively health behavior research. However, it has been used to a limited extent in the weather domain. The current study uses PMT as a framework to explain intention to respond protectively to five weather hazards. It also probes deeper into the perceived costs associated with a series of protective actions. An online survey measured perceived threat severity, threat susceptibility, efficacy, and costs associated with hypothetical high-and low-cost protective responses and intention to take the recommended action for lightning, flooding, heat, winter weather, and tornadoes. All PMT variables were significantly correlated with the intention to take protective action except for perceived vulnerability and the intent to take action in the high-cost scenarios. In factor analysis, response costs broke down into two factors that could be described as how hard an action is to accomplish or how inconvenient or disruptive it is. In a structural model to predict protection motivation, disruptive costs improved the model fit, along with perceived threat, response efficacy, and self-efficacy. In addition to supporting the significance of perceived efficacy in explaining protective behavior, this study also validates the importance of including response costs in a way that is distinct from self-efficacy. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: This study evaluates the relative perception of response costs among five weather hazards while using protection motivation theory as a framework to explain intention to take protective action. It also furthers our understanding of how response costs should be measured and affirms the importance of self-efficacy in explaining behavioral intentions. Information about which types of response costs are likely to influence response to a threat, as well as how individuals are likely to feel about various recommended actions, can be used by warning communicators to tailor messages to help counter responses that are not protective.