The geography of responses to heat risk: linking decision maker and public perceptions

酷暑继续对全球数百万人的健康和福祉造成负面影响。人们和政策制定者感知高温风险的方式可能会影响他们对极端高温的保护性反应。在这个项目中，研究人员将评估人们如何感知高温风险和参与应对行为，并将这些与政策制定者和决策者理解其选民的感知和行为的情况进行对比。通过这样做，调查人员将弥合公众对极端高温风险和防热行为反应选项的感知方式，以及决策者对它们的感知和管理方式之间的差距。该项目有助于地方和地区政府建立对极端高温的复原力的更广泛努力。该项目产生的新知识有可能改善高温治理、通报高温警告和风险沟通，并设计更有效的公共卫生干预措施。该项目包括研究，以帮助那些最容易受到高温和其他类型天气灾害影响的人，以及负责减少这些系统性脆弱性的决策者和政策制定者。该项目有助于地理学和行为科学的理论和方法进步，以及它们在风险背景下的交叉。通过收集和缩小代表性调查数据以确定热反应的地理差异，结合决策者调查以更好地了解他们对其组成部分的看法和信念，调查人员将检查不同级别的热治理对热的风险认知和反应。该项目将把国家和地方各级代表性社会调查数据的空间分析和建模的新的量化技术与政策制定者和决策者的调查结合起来。调查人员利用具有代表性的调查数据和小区域估计的优势，使用多水平回归和后分层来产生对公众对高温风险的看法和反应的国家、州和地方估计。这种方法提供了一个基线，以了解负责热治理的决策者和政策制定者如何理解其成员的看法和反应，并将其纳入热规划和应对工作。两个研讨会和一个研讨会聚集了研究人员和利益相关者，在极端高温的人类和地理维度的研究项目中协同学习和想法。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Extreme heat continues to negatively affect the health and wellbeing of millions of people globally. The way people and policy-makers perceive heat risks is likely to influence their protective responses to extreme heat. In this project, the investigators will assess how populations perceive heat risks and engage in response behaviors and will situate these against how policy and decision makers understand their constituents’ perceptions and behaviors. By doing so, the investigators will bridge the gap between how extreme heat risk and heat-protective behavioral response options are being perceived by the public and how they are perceived and managed by decision makers. This project contributes to broader efforts to build resilience to extreme heat by local and regional governments. New knowledge generated in this project has the potential to improve heat governance, inform heat warnings and risk communication, and design more effective public health interventions. The project includes research to help those who are most vulnerable to heat and other types of weather hazards as well as the decision and policy makers responsible for reducing these systemic vulnerabilities. This project contributes to theoretical and methodological advances in geography and behavioral sciences and their intersection in a risk context. By collecting and downscaling representative survey data to determine geographic variations in heat response combined with decision-maker surveys to better understand their perceptions and beliefs about their constituents, the investigators will examine risk perceptions and responses to heat across different levels of heat governance. This project will integrate emerging quantitative techniques for spatial analysis and modeling of representative social survey data from national to local scales with surveys of policy and decision-makers. The investigators leverage the strengths of representative survey data and small-area estimation using multilevel regression and poststratification to produce national, state, and local estimates of public perceptions and responses to heat risk. This approach provides a baseline from which to understand how decision- and policy-makers responsible for heat governance understand their own constituents’ perceptions and responses and incorporate them into heat planning and response efforts. Two workshops and one symposium gather researchers and stakeholders to synergize learning and ideas across research projects on human and geographic dimensions of extreme heat.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.