Are Kiwis plagued by hazard fatigue?

We are quick to believe in product recalls but suspicious of disaster warnings.

A new study has found half of New Zealanders would rather trust their own judgment than official safety warnings.

The Wellington public relations company that carried out the survey blamed ‘‘hazard fatigue’’ on the cry-wolf effect: ‘‘We’re getting official warnings wrong, and the public is learning to distrust them.’’

But civil defence boss Bruce Pepperell instead pointed the finger at ‘‘self-styled experts’’ on social media, sowing first confusion, then distrust.

‘‘Their motivation isn’t about providing sane and logical information but stirring things up.’’

BlacklandPR’s survey of 1270 people found younger and more highly educated people were more likely to be sceptical of official hazard warnings, and would rely on their own judgment as well as other information sources.

Director Mark Blackham said: ‘‘It’s the cry-wolf effect. When the disaster doesn’t happen, people stop believing it.’’

He pointed to the dire weather warnings about Cyclone Cook, predicted to be New Zealand’s worst storm since Cyclone Giselle sank the Wahine in 1968.

‘‘Saying it would be worse than the Wahine actually did more damage, because now people don’t believe them.’’

By contrast, product recalls followed a strict and precise formula, alerting people to the batches affected and by what, whereas disaster warnings were too broad and often unnecessary, he said.

‘‘People need specific, targeted and correct information they can follow.’’

Pepperell, regional manager of the Wellington Region Emergency Management Office, said most people followed official warnings, but it was imperative they used a credible source for disaster information. Following Civil Defence on social media was one of the best ways to get correct information.

The tsunami warning after Kaikoura’s November 14 quake was well heeded by people within the evacuation zone, but Wellingtonians could still do better. ‘‘People think ‘it won’t happen to me’ and when it does, it’s too late.’’

Massey University psychologist Shane Harvey said hazard fatigue was mainly caused by an attitude of ‘‘it won’t happen to me because it didn’t happen last time’’.

Fear was a strong motivation behind people following hazard warnings, and when that fear was lost through repeated warnings, people stopped complying.

David Johnston, a professor of disaster management at Massey University in Wellington, said: ‘‘If you have evacuated many times before and nothing happens, then you begin to normalise it.’’

It was also difficult to persuade people to react to something they had never experienced. ‘‘We have not had a damaging tsunami, so people underestimate the danger.’’

The way people reacted to official warnings was very dependant on what those around them were doing, which was why evacuations were a community process, not an individual one.

Johnston said a survey after the Kaikoura earthquake showed more than 50 per cent of residents in the tsunami zone around Petone and Eastbourne heeded evacuation warnings – a number he was happy with.

As for warnings that turned out to be unnecessary, he often thought of an old saying about the London Blitz: ‘‘When the sirens went off and people went into their shelters, then came out to see their house was still standing, how did they feel?

‘‘Were they angry it wasn’t bombed, or happy it wasn’t bombed?’’