Tsunami Warning Message Interpretation and Sense Making: Focus Group Insights

Hazard warning messages are intended to shift people from a sense of safety to a sense of risk, while providing guidance for protective action. Message features, such as the content elements that are included and the style in which a message is written or delivered, can strengthen or weaken a recipient's ability to make sense of and act on the message. Under conditions of heightened uncertainty or imminent threat the strategies that people apply to interpret warning messages may make a difference in the protective actions that they choose to take. Importantly, when a hazard is unfamiliar and the threat is imminent, adequate mental models and clearly articulated messages become vital to one's ability to make decisions about life safety. To better understand the message interpretation and the effects of message sense making on individual risk information processing, this article assesses warnings for an infrequently experienced threat: tsunamis. Using data from four focus groups this research finds that individuals engage in interpretive sense making activities by making comparisons to media accounts of tsunamis and drawing from personal experience with waves and with warnings for other hazards, particularly tornadoes. The analysis presents three primary insights: 1) hazard warning messages must be designed for the end user in mind, including those who are unfamiliar with the hazard; 2) clear and specific information helps to personalize the threat and to reduce anxiety; and 3) message receivers draw from personal and vicarious experiences to assist in message sense making, highlighting the need for consistent language across hazard warnings.