RAPID: Preferences and Decisions to Evacuate in the Face of Hurricane Harvey

这项研究着眼于谁决定离开，谁决定在2017年8月哈维飓风登陆之前面对公民的强制撤离。 市民得到了充分的警告，飓风哈维的强度正在增加，并可能带来创纪录的降雨量。社会科学家经常研究公民在自然灾害面前撤离或留下的决定。我们发现，当人们了解他们的风险时，当他们充分了解留下来的危险时，当他们有资源离开时，他们就会离开。然而，社会科学家并不了解对风险的偏好、对公职人员的信任以及与他人的合作如何影响离开的决定。人们对公民在地方官员的敦促下同意留下财产的理解还不太清楚。公民听取政府官员的建议是民主社会的一个核心要素。 然而，众所周知，相当大一部分人口拒绝沿着强制撤离命令。当自然灾害严重时，那些留下来的人给第一反应者带来了巨大的压力。这项研究提供了深入了解是什么促使人们离开或留下。这反过来将有助于政府官员努力说服人们在必要时撤离。社会科学家们已经深入研究了人们在自然灾害发生前是否撤离的合理性。 这些研究中的大部分都是在事件（洪水，龙卷风或飓风）后观察个人，并要求他们回忆他们的决定。 这些事后回忆通常与人们对灾难的态度有关。不幸的是，回忆，灾难的范围和事后的态度是混乱的。灾难改变了人们的态度，而且往往是以一种自私的方式。人们重新构建自己的故事，讲述是什么驱使他们离开或留下。我们的研究通过利用生活在飓风易发地区的个人样本来解决这个问题，这些人在2009年至2011年期间对风险和损失的偏好以及对灾害的态度进行了测量。这些人中的许多人是三波小组的一部分，重复测量。我们将再次联系这些人，询问他们是否在哈维飓风首次登陆前遵守了强制撤离。我们的衡量标准并不关心他们重建的理由，而是他们做了什么。然后，他们的行为将与在此事件之前采取的一系列措施联系起来。这使得这项研究处于一个不寻常的位置，看看是否对风险，损失，时间折扣，信任和合作的基本偏好预测基本疏散行为。

This study looks at who decided to leave and who decided to stay in the face of a mandatory evacuation of citizens prior to the landfall of Hurricane Harvey in August 2017. Citizens were given ample warnings that Hurricane Harvey was growing in intensity and was likely to bring record amounts of rainfall. Social scientists often have studied decisions by citizens to evacuate or remain in the face of a natural disaster. We find that when people understand their risk, when they are well informed about the hazards of staying and when they have resources to leave, they will. However, social scientists do not understand how preferences about risk, trust in public officials and cooperation with others inform decisions to leave. Understanding when citizens agree to leave behind their property at the urging of local officials is something that is not well understood. Citizens heeding the recommendations of public officials are a central element of a democratic society. Yet it is well known that a sizeable proportion of the population refuses to go along with mandatory evacuation orders. When the natural disaster is severe, those staying behind place enormous stress on first responders. This research provides insight into what motivates people to leave or stay. This in turn will help public officials in their efforts to convince people to evacuate when necessary. Social scientists have thoroughly explored people's rationalization about whether to evacuate prior to a natural disaster. Much of this research has looked at individuals after an event (a flood, a tornado or a hurricane) and asked them to recall their decisions. These post-event recollections are usually correlated with attitudes that people hold about disasters. Unfortunately, the recollections, the scope of the disaster and post-event attitudes are confounded. The disaster alters attitudes, often in a self-serving manner. People rebuild their own narratives about what drove them to leave or remain. Our research solves this problem by leveraging a sample of individuals living in a hurricane-prone area whose preferences toward risk and loss and attitudes about disasters were measured between 2009 and 2011. Many of these individuals were part of a three-wave panel with repeated measures. We will re-contact these individuals and ask them whether they obeyed a mandatory evacuation prior to the first landfall of Hurricane Harvey. Our measures are not concerned with their reconstructed rationale, but rather what they did. Their behavior will then be linked to the rich set of measures taken well prior to this event. This puts this research in an unusual position to see if fundamental preferences about risk, loss, time discounting, trust and cooperation predict basic evacuation behavior.