Hurricane season begins in July and lasts to November, with the potential to wreak havoc to personal property and businesses, and even claim lives. Despite the warnings, a significant number of people don’t take enough, or any, precautions in advance of disaster.
The reasons for this state of preparedness ennui are the subject of Robert Meyer’s recent paper, “Decision Science Perspectives on Hurricane Vulnerability: Evidence from the 2010-2012 Atlantic Hurricane Seasons.” Meyer, a marketing professor at Wharton, is also the co-director of the Risk Management and Decision Process Center. He argues that while people don’t forget storms in the past per se, they don’t retain the visceral feelings they experienced during those storms.
While there may be a psychological basis to explain why people don’t prepare in advance for storms, the only way to prompt motivation, Meyer believes, is to create a strict set of rules, then hope that people follow them.
Meyer discusses his paper and the psychological research around decisions and disaster preparedness on Wharton Business Radio.
Read the entire story at Knowledge@Wharton.
