Are We Just Guessing? An Exploratory Study of Minnesota Emergency Managers' Perceptions of Citizen Preparedness

Abstract

Emergency management research suggests that citizen preparedness is paramount to household survival in disasters. Thus, having a citizenry that is well prepared is ideal for individuals who work directly in emergency management and disaster response roles. At the lowest governmental level, it is the local emergency manager who is tasked with the job of promoting preparedness to their respective jurisdictions. However, to effectively promote preparedness to citizens, it is presumed that an emergency manager would need a fairly accurate perception of citizen preparedness. However, emergency managers rarely have data to determine their jurisdiction’s level of preparedness. Without data to inform a perception, how does an emergency manager determine the preparedness of his or her jurisdiction? This study explores two possible cognitive heuristics that could play a role in how county-level emergency managers form their perceptions of preparedness; the availability heuristic and the false consensus effect.