What Motivates Individuals to Protect Themselves from Risks: The Case of Wildland Fires

Abstract

This research investigates the cognitive perceptual process that homeowners go through when faced with the decision to protect themselves from the risk of wildfires. This decision can be examined by looking at the interaction between the integrated protection motivation theory-transtheoretical model and different levels of homeowners' subjective knowledge related to wildfire risks. We investigated the role of motivation, decision stages of risk readiness, and subjective knowledge on the number of risk-mitigating actions undertaken by homeowners living in high-risk communities. The results indicate that homeowners who are in an early or precontemplative stage (both low and high subjective knowledge) as well as low knowledge contemplatives are motivated by their perceived degree of vulnerability to mitigate the risk. In contrast, high knowledge contemplatives' potential behavioral changes are more likely to be motivated by increasing their perceptions of the severity of the risk. Risk-mitigating behaviors undertaken by high knowledge action homeowners are influenced by their perceptions of risk severity, self-efficacy, and response efficacy. In contrast, the low knowledge action homeowners engage in risk reduction behaviors without the influence of any of the PMT variables; demonstrating their motivation to emulate others in their community. These results have implications for the type of information that should be used to effectively communicate risks in an effort to influence the diverse homeowner segments to engage in risk-reduction behaviors.

Application of Protection Motivation Theory to Investigate Sustainable Waste Management Behaviors

“…PMT is primarily applied to explain people's decisions to partake in health risk mitigation behaviors [33,34] and disaster prevention [35][36][37]. A number of researchers have also applied PMT to explain pro-environmental behaviors.…”

The importance of threat, strategy, and resource appraisals for long-term proactive risk management among forest owners in Sweden

“…flooding, wildfire, and seismic hazards) have revealed that cognitive threat appraisals are important for responses to natural hazards (e.g. Grothmann and Reusswig 2006;Martin, Bender, and Raish 2007;Terpstra and Lindell 2012). However, especially when coping appraisals are considered, threat appraisals are not always significant predictors (e.g.…”

“…Bubeck et al 2013;Grothmann and Reusswig 2006;Martin, Bender, and Raish 2007;Terpstra and Lindell 2012). Notably, whereas self-efficacy, in accordance with PMT, has been found to be significantly related to responses, the importance of resourcerelated attributes for responses suggested in the PADM has not been confirmed (e.g.…”

“…Since stage models (e.g. the transtheoretical model of change) suggest that different predictors may determine threat responses depending on, for example, knowledge level (Martin, Bender, and Raish 2007), the model was tested not only in the full sample but also separately among owners both less and more involved in forestry.…”

Psychological determinants of financial buffer saving: the influence of financial risk tolerance and regulatory focus

“…This shift, inspired by both ideological and monetary reasons (Veldheer et al 2012), is visible in areas ranging from flood management (Kievik and Gutteling 2011) to crime prevention (van Steden, van Caem, and Boutellier 2011). While people are capable of taking protective measures (see Martin, Bender, and Raish 2007), and such investments can reduce damage by calamities considerably (Kreibich et al 2005), an essential prerequisite remains an individual's financial resources.…”