Tornado warning response among international and domestic college students in a dynamic tracking task

Abstract

This research is to investigate Oklahoma State University's (OSU) international and domestic students' tornado information preferences and their choices of protective actions when facing tornado threats. This study utilized the DynaSearch program to conduct a computer-based experiment. The program allowed the researcher to examine study participants' tornado information search patterns, risk perception, and their choices of protective action under different forecast advisories in two tornado scenarios (watch and warning). The researcher collected data from 298 students, which consisted of 112 international and 186 domestic students at Oklahoma State University in the Fall semester of 2019. The researcher randomly assigned 58 international students to the watch alert group and 54 international students to the warning alert group. The researcher also randomly assigned 101 U.S. domestic students to the watch alert group and 85 U.S. domestic students to the warning alert group. The assignment to the watch and warning group allowed the researcher to compare the results of different risk perceptions and protective action after viewing the five separate advisories. The results are that international and domestic students have significantly different risk perceptions and protective action choices towards tornadoes and different tornado information preferences. Thus, more customized alert dissemination methods should be utilized for university students as a vulnerable group. In the future, the results of this study not only can contribute to the development of an efficient warning method for university students in the U.S. but also can help emergency managers and meteorologists to make better warning policies.