By Brooke Amendola

– Executive Summary –

Boston, Massachusetts, has never issued a large-scale mandatory evacuation order, but it faces increased risks of sea level rise, extreme weather events, and flooding. The lack of evacuation experience, combined with the city’s linguistic and cultural diversity, could present challenges in both the public’s understanding of and compliance with an evacuation order. Research shows that emotional, social, and cultural factors influence how individuals perceive risk, which can also play a role in evacuation behaviors. This thesis examines how the City of Boston can improve its emergency communication and evacuation strategies to align more closely with how people perceive and respond to risk.

Research Question and Design

This thesis seeks to answer the question: How can Boston apply findings from risk perception, evacuation, and crisis communication literature to improve its evacuation and emergency public information plans and policies?

The research included a literature review, plans analysis, and focus group discussion. The first stage involved a comprehensive literature review on three core themes: evacuation behavior, risk perception, and crisis communication. The literature review served as the foundation for the second and third stages, a thematic plans analysis of the City of Boston’s Evacuation Support Annex and Emergency Public Information Support Annex and a focus group discussion with representatives from key City of Boston departments, respectively. In the second stage, I analyzed the plans to evaluate how they addressed and incorporated the themes from the literature. In the third stage, I facilitated a 90-minute focus group with 11 City of Boston employees, where they shared the city’s current evacuation and emergency communications strategies and offered opportunities for improvement based on the literature and their lived experiences. I transcribed and thematically coded the focus group transcripts using the themes from the literature to ensure consistency with the plans analysis. These stages integrated theoretical and practical perspectives to develop actionable recommendations for Boston’s evacuation and crisis communication frameworks.

Findings and Recommendations

Research findings and recommendations are organized around the three themes drawn from the literature and applied throughout the analysis: risk perception, evacuation behavior, and risk communication.

Risk Perception

Public perception of risk is shaped by emotions, past experiences, and trust in authorities rather than strictly scientific assessments.[1] Boston residents may underestimate their risk if they have not experienced a major evacuation event or if their perception of the risk warranting an evacuation does not match that of official city messaging. The City of Boston’s Evacuation Support Annex and Emergency Public Information Support Annex lack strategies to address public emotions and skepticism. Repeated false alarms or weather that does not match forecasted impacts can undermine trust in official guidance, making it important for city messaging to transparently express decision-making processes and reasoning. Focus group participants emphasized the importance of transparent messaging around why decisions are made and messaging that is relatable or rooted in lived experiences. Pre-incident engagement efforts could also enhance trust by establishing consistent communication before emergencies occur and proactively addressing common constituent concerns.

In agreement with the literature findings, the stakeholder focus group also highlighted that residents’ risk perception is influenced by their social networks.[2] Participants noted that official messaging is often discussed within personal and community circles before influencing behavior. However, the analysis of the city’s plans identified a lack of standard operating procedures or strategies for incorporating trusted community voices into risk messaging, which leaves a gap between official messaging and trusted sources amongst constituents. To address gaps in risk perception, public trust, and the integration of community voices in emergency public messaging, the following recommendations are proposed:

1. Integrate storytelling techniques into emergency social media messaging from the City of Boston to elicit emotional or personal responses, making public messaging more relatable and influencing factors that tie to public risk perception.
2. Increase transparency in emergency decision-making by explaining the uncertainty in forecasting, why evacuation orders are issued when they are, and the rationale behind protective measures.
3. Expand pre-incident engagement to familiarize residents with emergency management processes and resources that would be made available to alleviate logistical concerns among residents and to build trust prior to an emergency. Consistent public engagement efforts should occur year-round, including community meetings, preparedness workshops/trainings, and social media campaigns.
4. Leverage trusted community voices to enhance the credibility of emergency public messaging among residents. Partnerships should be made before an incident so that public messaging can be amplified through community leaders, faith-based organizations, or other trusted voices within the city.

Evacuation Behavior

People rely heavily on their social networks to validate risks and make evacuation decisions.[3] Focus group participants noted that family and friends play a crucial role in reinforcing or downplaying the need to evacuate. The city’s plans lack formal strategies for leveraging these social structures. Cultural identity and lived experiences further shape evacuation behavior.[4] Focus group participants identified key barriers to evacuation, such as financial limitations, transportation access, or concerns over returning to the city following an evacuation order. Without acknowledging or addressing these concerns, evacuation messaging may fail to motivate residents to act, and instead, evacuation may be viewed as an unnecessary or unattainable burden. The current evacuation and emergency public messaging plans do not sufficiently address these factors. Focus group participants highlighted the importance of preemptively communicating clear guidance on evacuation logistics and available resources. Focus group participants also shared that the city should engage in modes of communication that residents are already using.

To improve evacuation messaging and ensure that it accounts for social networks, cultural influences, and potential logistical barriers, the following recommendations are proposed:

1. Develop messaging that accounts for cultural and social influences and is disseminated to commonly used platforms. A one-size-fits-all approach to public messaging may not be effective, even if translated into commonly spoken languages.
2. Encourage residents to check on neighbors and assist in spreading accurate emergency information. The City of Boston can leverage the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) members that are integrated into the city’s neighborhoods to assist in peer-to-peer message amplification.
3. Integrate real-time evacuation information into navigation tools such as Waze and Google Maps. Real-time route updates, shelter locations, and road closures will help residents understand available resources and see real-time road conditions. This recommendation ties to focus group discussion on utilizing platforms that residents already use to engage in communication and to provide information about accessible resources.
4. Increase public education campaigns on evacuation zones and what to expect during events that would require mass evacuation as well as anticipated available resources or support.

Crisis Communication

Focus group participants determined that emergency messaging should be framed with clear, relatable narratives as opposed to relying solely on data-driven language. Storytelling techniques such as testimonials were identified by focus group participants as ways to make risk messaging even more relatable and persuasive. These approaches to public messaging are not currently addressed or strategized in the city’s Emergency Public Information Support Annex.

The focus group reinforced that certain populations may rely on communication through cultural, community, or faith-based organizations rather than official city outlets. The plans analysis and stakeholder focus group discussion showed that while Boston’s emergency communications include multiple channels and translation into the city’s top 12 languages, there is a gap when it comes to cultural nuances and ensuring information reaches all demographic groups effectively.

Social media plays a key role in crisis communication as it can rapidly disseminate messaging to widespread users, but it can also be a source for misinformation.[5] Focus group participants agreed that misinformation is difficult to correct once the public has formed an opinion, and while the city’s plans point out the challenge of misinformation, there are currently no clear directives on how to address or combat it.

To ensure that emergency messaging resonates with diverse communities and reaches people through their trusted information sources, the following recommendations are proposed:

1. Increase use of video-based messaging on social media. Videos should include diverse community voices for relatability.
2. Conduct an audit of how different demographic groups and populations receive emergency information or news. This audit will identify communication gaps and ensure messaging can be tailored to residents’ preferred platforms and formats.
3. Expand the use of non-traditional communication platforms based on audit findings to reach populations who may not engage with traditional city channels, which was a concern of focus group participants.
4. Strengthen misinformation response strategies by dedicating and training personnel to track, assess, and counter misinformation in real time. Clear, factual responses should be disseminated through trusted sources and amplified by community leaders to increase credibility.

Conclusion

            This thesis contributes to the literature on public risk perception and response to emergencies and can provide the City of Boston with insights to enhance evacuation and public information dissemination planning. The research findings reinforce that risk perception is influenced by emotions and personal experiences, while evacuation behavior is influenced by social networks, cultural influences, and logistical concerns. Therefore, emergency communications strategies should address these factors by including messaging that resonates with diverse populations through their preferred communication channels.

            This research provides insights into the City of Boston’s evacuation and emergency communication strategies; however, limitations of the research should be acknowledged. The focus group participants were all City of Boston officials; the perspectives of residents were not directly captured in this study. Future research should expand stakeholder engagement to include resident and community leaders to gain additional insights. Comparative research across multiple municipalities or jurisdictions with different geographic or demographic characteristics could provide additional findings.

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[1] Paul Slovic, “Perception of Risk,” Science 236, no. 4799 (April 17, 1987): 280–85, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.3563507; Paul Slovic, “The Risk Game,” Risk and Governance 86, no. 1 (September 14, 2001): 17–24, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-3894(01)00248-5.

[2] J. Richard Eiser et al., “Risk Interpretation and Action: A Conceptual Framework for Responses to Natural Hazards,” International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 1 (2012): 5–16, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2012.05.002; Craig W. Trumbo et al., “A Cognitive-Affective Scale for Hurricane Risk Perception,” Risk Analysis: An International Journal 36, no. 12 (2016): 2233–46, https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.12575.

[3] Trumbo et al., “A Cognitive-Affective Scale”; Eiser et al., “Risk Interpretation and Action.”

[4] Roberta D. Baer, Susan C. Weller, and Christopher Roberts, “The Role of Regional Cultural Values in Decisions about Hurricane Evacuation,” Human Organization 78, no. 2 (Summer 2019): 133–46; Julie L. Demuth et al., “The Effects of Past Hurricane Experiences on Evacuation Intentions through Risk Perception and Efficacy Beliefs: A Mediation Analysis,” Weather, Climate, and Society 8, no. 4 (October 2016): 327–44, https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-15-0074.1.

[5] Amber Silver and Lindsay Matthews, “The Use of Facebook for Information Seeking, Decision Support, and Self-Organization Following a Significant Disaster,” Information, Communication & Society 20, no. 11 (2017): 1682, https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2016.1253762.