Effects of Repetitive False Evacuation Advisory on Residents' Behavior

Abstract

The avoidance of overlooking increases the frequency of false alarms, and the avoidance of false alarms increases the frequency of overlooking. We call the former a “high frequency strategy” situation and the latter a “low frequency strategy” situation. The dilemma between the above strategies is inevitable because of the technical limitation in generating hazardous assessment information. Regarding this issue, the Japan Cabinet Office announced a “high frequency strategy” policy in the Guidelines for Preparing Manuals in Issuance and Transmission of Evacuation Advisory, September 2014. From the perspective of high frequency of evacuation advisories in the future, it seems that it is necessary to cultivate deeper discussions and reconsiderations about the merits and demerits of “permitting false alarms,” “high frequency strategy,” and “low frequency strategy.”

In this paper, based on data collected through a psychological experiment, we investigated the effects of repetition of false evacuation advisory on residents' decision making regarding evacuation behavior. From the results of the investigation, the following conclusions were reached. The merit of an evacuation advisory based on the high frequency strategy was able to be observed only at a comparatively short initial stage after the introduction of an evacuation advisory. After the middle stage, merits were not observed and instead some demerits were conspicuous.