What predicts hurricane evacuation decisions? The importance of efficacy beliefs, risk perceptions, and other factors

This article uses data from a hypothetical hurricane situation presented in a survey to examine the roles of different factors in influencing evacuation decisions. Risk theories and empirical research indicate that a variety of factors can influence people's protective decisions for natural hazards.

Analysis finds that the strongest predictors of respondents' evacuation intentions are their beliefs about the effectiveness of evacuation for reducing personal harm (response efficacy) and their perceptions that they could get hurt if they stay home during the hurricane. These types of situation-specific cognitive risk perceptions and response efficacy beliefs explain a much larger amount of the variance in evacuation intentions than respondents' worry, fear, or perceptions of the hurricane's wind, storm surge, or rain flooding hazards.