WHY DON ’ T THEY LISTEN WHEN WE TELL THEM WHAT TO DO ! Engaging Communities in Managing Their Own Safety

This paper will outline issues relating to developing a risk communication model in the context of severe but infrequent disasters such as significant floods, bushfires or storms. It will investigate the concept of risk perception and the elements that contribute to an integrated community safety campaign. The paper will review traditional approaches to community education that have been used by emergency agencies. It will suggest a need for an integrated risk communication model that acknowledges community perceptions about the risks they face, and while encouraging self-reliance, also acknowledging the limitations of this approach. It will then present a coherent conceptual framework for communicating and involving the public, focusing on the pre-disaster phase. It also explores the risk optimism bias that occurs when communicating with people about natural disasters. Integral to this approach is the belief that people do not categorise all risks as the same and will underestimate or overestimate the risk according to their perception or understanding of the impact on their lives. The principal factors that contribute to an effective community safety program are explored including the nature of the disaster and associated risk, the perception of the risk and peoples willingness to act, identifying the stages of risk communication, identifying audiences and associated messages and community resilience. Introduction The emergency management field is in the midst of historic changes. The focus of expectations has changed dramatically, from a pure emergency response to a proactive 'risk management' approach involving disaster mitigation, prevention, and risk communication (Keys 1999a, Buckle 1998). At the same time as expectations of emergency services are changing, so is too the nature of the public changing. These expectations reinforce the need for innovation, rigorous planning and an evidencebased culture in the design of community safety programs. However, while there has been considerable education resources developed in Australia, there has been little research to substantiate a link to an appropriate risk communication model: one that explains the relationship between vulnerable communities and their willingness to become involved with community safety programs (Boura, 1998). Traditional approaches to community safety Traditional education approaches, often called public awareness programs, are currently being questioned. Historically, when emergency services have undertaken community education, they have informed the community about hazards and their risks through distribution of prepared material emphasising actions residents can undertake to protect themselves and their property. The communication process was often one-off and one-way, and assumed that the audience was an indistinguishable group of individuals who had the same needs and values. The number of resources distributed measured the effectiveness of this traditional approach and the extent to which individuals implemented safety messages. The messages contained details of specific information or action necessary to prepare for an emergency. The indicators used to determine a successful campaign were focussed on the ability of the individual to demonstrate an awareness of the safety messages presented. This traditional model is one where the emergency professional is the ‘active agent’ and the community member is the passive recipient of appropriate messages (Macdonald, 1998). The deficits of this model are at last being recognised and research has questioned the effectiveness of these education strategies in changing people’s behaviour. Implicit in this approach was the assumption that there was a direct correlation between awareness raising and behavioural change. "It is frequently assumed that providing the public with information on hazards and their mitigation will encourage preparation. This assumption is unfounded. " (Paton et al., undated). This failing of the traditional Information-Action model is contained in the supposition that merely informing the individual or community about a hazard, will lead to awareness and awareness to actions, and then to sustained behavioural change. Boura (1998) identifies the weakness in the belief that there is a strong and direct causal link between receiving information and acting. Finding Better Risk Communication Approaches for Community Safety It is apparent that new approaches are required to create the desirable behavioural changes. The focus in the current methodology on individual behavioural change through conveying information needs to be broadened to include social or community factors. Fortunately, rather than re-inventing the wheel, we are able to learn and adapt approaches and models which have been proven in other jurisdictions -notably health promotion, social marketing, community safety and adult education -to present a community safety model that identifies and addresses the concerns of all affected groups. The behavioural models that have influenced the development of community safety programs are summarised in Speaking of Health (Institute of Medicine 2002). The first of these health promotion models is the Health Belief Model. According to this model, two main factors contribute to a person’s willingness to adopt appropriate health behaviours. The person must believe that there is a significant risk to them and the suggested benefits will compensate for the cost of undertaking the appropriate behaviours. The second is the Social Cognitive Theory, that emphasises the importance of individual self-efficacy, or selfconfidence that they can exercise some degree over their behaviour and the outcomes they want to achieve. The Theory of Reasoned Action asserts that the extent of behaviour change can be viewed as a function of a person’s attitude towards performing the action and a person’s perception of what his/her peers’ attitude is towards performing the task. The identification of community norms as an incentive or hindrance to change is an important factor, especially in low perceived/high actual risk environments, and highlights the need to work closely with community expectations. Factors that Influence Community Safety One of the most contentious issues in the emergency risk communication field is the identification of factors that contribute to a successful community safety program. Previous programs had centred on the Information/Action model; however, research carried out by Pfister (2001) after the recent Grafton floods, have demonstrated that hazard and risk information, when distributed in isolation from the social setting, will not have a significant impact on awareness or behavioural change. The principal factors that contribute to an effective community safety program include: a) The nature of the hazard and associated risk; b) The perception of the risk and people’s willingness to act; c) Identifying the stages of risk communication; d) Identifying audiences and associated messages; and e) Community resilience. a. The nature of the hazard and associated risk Emergency managers frequently express frustration with the public when they demonstrate a lack of concern at what experts know to be an extreme risk that threatens a community. This is particularly so when managers need to communicate the risk resulting from an infrequent but severe hazard. As risk managers, one of the greatest dilemmas in flood and storm communication is how can the public be alerted to the risk of low-probability, high-consequence disasters such as severe floods? The conventional wisdom is that people need to be convinced of the risks. It is our role as risk managers, to give them sufficient details of the hazard, so that they will be prepared to protect themselves from the consequences. However, conventional wisdom runs into a wall of public indifference -an indifference with its own logic. “Why should I concern myself with risks that -while they may be severe -are rare and usually low-intensity, and which the government and emergency agencies are practiced at managing? ” The fact is, we may be asking the public to act on someone else's problem – in this case, the risk manager’s problem. The issue then becomes one of not only identifying the actual risk from a severe hazard, but also understanding how people will perceive the risk and be willing to adopt protective behaviours. b. Risk Perception Integral to the community safety approach is the belief that people do not categorise all risks as the same. In other words, they will underestimate or overestimate the risk according to their perception or understanding of the impact of the risk on their own lives. In situations such as an infrequent but severe hazard, the decisionmaking process is made harder by the complex variables that influence an individual’s perception of the risk. Sandman (1994) found that people were often hostile to the idea that they are at risk. People judged themselves less at risk than the ‘average’ person to a variety of natural and technological hazards. This view dominates most responses to risk, and people support it by devising a rationale for the conviction that the hazard will pass them by, or that it will only inflict minor damage to their property. According to the Optimism Bias model, people usually underestimate risks because they would rather believe they are safe, free to live their lives without the responsibility of feeling vulnerable and obliged to make difficult or unpopular decisions that would affect their lifestyle. c. Stages of Risk Communication Risk communication may be defined as an interactive process of exchanging information and opinions between stakeholders regarding the nature and associated risks of a hazard on the individual or community and the appropriate responses to minimise the risks. The key to behavioural change lies in risk communication designed to change people’s perception of the r