Perceived attributes of hurricane-related retrofits and their effect on household adoption

Understanding how homeowners make protective action decisions is important for designing policies and programs to encourage those actions and community resilience as a whole. This paper focuses on the role of homeowner perceptions of attributes of the protective actions themselves in influencing household protective action decisions. Specifically, using a combination of revealed and stated preference data from a mailed survey of homeowners in North Carolina (n = 234), we fitted mixed logit models to predict the probability a homeowner has or intends to structurally retrofit (strengthen) her home to mitigate hurricane wind and flood damage. We found evidence supporting the hypotheses that a higher probability of undertaking a retrofit is associated with homeowner beliefs that: (1) The retrofit cost is not too high, (2) the installation does not require too much effort, (3) they understand how it works, (4) it would add to home value, (5) it would protect lives, (6) it would protect property, and (7) it would not make the home less attractive. This work shows that homeowners make retrofit decisions based on a portfolio of perceived attributes that depend on the type of retrofit under consideration. Although cost is important, other factors carry considerable weight in the decision as well. Further, findings suggest that study of one type of protective action (e.g., having an emergency kit) may not be generalizable to other actions (adding hurricane shutters) without considering these attributes.