The problem with SMS campus warning systems: An evaluation based on recipients’ spatial awareness

A Protection-Motivation Perspective to Explain Intention to Use and Continue to Use Mobile Warning Systems

“…Research in the mobile-enabled warning context has investigated factors that motivate students to subscribe to receiving emergency SMS (Ada et al 2016 ; Bonaretti and Fischer-Preßler 2021 ), adopt social media services for emergency warnings (Lee et al 2013 ), and comply with emergency warning systems (Han et al 2015 ), but only in the context of campus communities. However, the unique cultural and institutional conditions of student populations render it difficult to generalize those findings.…”

“You are here”: Assessing the inclusion of maps in a campus emergency alert system

“…While functioning at a smaller scale than WEAs, college campuses similarly send SMS alerts to notify students of incidents including criminal offences and imminent threats (Bonaretti & Fischer‐Preßler, 2021; Patten et al., 2019) as required by the Clery Act (Hasinoff & Krueger, 2020). The emergency notification policy was added to the Clery Act following the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech (Hasinoff & Krueger, 2020), which sparked an influx of new campus alert systems (Fox & Savage, 2009; Hildebrand, 2017) and emphasized the need to continually improve multimodal and visually effective campus alert systems.…”

“…Alerts that fail to illustrate who should take protective action by describing the physical and geographical boundaries of at‐risk areas are likely to be ineffective (Mayhorn & McLaughlin, 2014), particularly if receivers have low spatial awareness (Bonaretti & Fischer‐Preßler, 2021). Providing a digital or interactive map gives more potential for information presentation, exploration, and analysis by the user (Dransch et al., 2010).…”

“…Emergency alerts are critical tools used to inform and instruct populations in crisis and risk situations (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, & Medicine [NASEM], 2018). Text messaging via SMS is a popular communication channel for emergency alert systems (Bonaretti & Fischer‐Preßler, 2021), and while the amount of information included in these messages is restricted by technological capabilities, rapid development of new technologies and increased access to smartphones have led researchers to explore new ways to warn publics (Kim et al., 2019; Sutton & Kuligowski, 2019; Weyrich et al., 2020), such as including maps depicting the location of the receiver in relation to the threat to more effectively communicate at‐risk locations (NASEM, 2018).…”

“…Maps are one of the most efficient tools used to quickly inform at‐risk populations given they can personalize risk information, increasing the likelihood of compliance and protective action during disasters (Liu et al., 2017). Recipients of SMS alerts are often unable to identify the at‐risk area and thus fail to comply, even if they are willing to do so, due to insufficient information (Bonaretti & Fischer‐Preßler, 2021). Maps supplementing short mock alert messages have the potential to reduce confusion and increase understanding of emerging threats (Sutton & Fischer, 2020), and have been shown to improve comprehension and behavioural compliance intention in a crisis (Liu et al., 2017).…”