Surprisingly, partisanship, political ideology, and religiosity were all found to have insignificant and substantively small effects on drought awareness.

All of these relationships were statistically significant at conventional levels and were among the largest substantive effects found in the model. As a supplement to the literature on how local environmental conditions influence public opinion in general, several research teams (Spence et al.

Finally, we included a measure of water resources information.

The results for policy preferences, also seen in Table 4, had some important differences. 2002; Heim 2002; Zargar et al. NEV, religiosity, and water information all had positive and significant relationships with policy preferences that were almost twice as large as the effects in the risk perception models. Additionally, the predisposition and demographic variables mattered more for policy preferences than risk perception. Perhaps most relevant to this study, local drought conditions have been linked to individual concern over water supplies and support for government regulation of water resources (Bishop 2013). Indeed, perception of local risk may actually play a larger role in individual policy support than objective risk (Zahran et al. 2002).

Agricultural drought refers to the effect of moisture shortages on agricultural production, taking into account how drought affects crops at different points in development. In more normal times, fire management partners across the state, stage a “Wildfire &Drought LOOKOUT!” campaign to increase people’s awareness of the connection between drought and wildfires.
This paper explores this possibility in the context of drought, examining what variables determine individual awareness of drought and further exploring how drought awareness influences risk perception and policy preferences. Although drought can be measured in many ways, understanding how citizens relate to a measure meant to be used in policy processes provides an interesting window into the relationship between citizens and science. An examination of perceptions of local weather conditions and climate change among residents in the U.S. Gulf Coast, Weather, climate, and the economy: Explaining risk perceptions of global warming, 2001–2010, Personal values, beliefs, and ecological risk perception, Perceptions of climate change and willingness to save energy related to flood experience, The social bases of environmental concern: A review of hypotheses, explanations and empirical evidence, Understanding the drought phenomenon: The role of definitions, Climate change vulnerability and policy support, This site uses cookies. Since drought is a multifaceted phenomenon, even a composite index may not fully capture the local-level impacts. Our mission is to help keep you up to date on the latest global drought conditions, global drought-related news stories, methods for combating drought in the home and workplace as well as offering an array of helpful tools and products that will benefit the planet as well as your water bill.

The Centennial Valley is primarily an agricultural community, and home to many wildlife species. We chose to include data from 2003 to 2012 in order to measure the general moisture levels of the area outside of the period meant to capture local drought. It is a linear and symmetric index, bound between −1 and 1, with negative values representing areas in which the atmospheric demand is greater than the moisture supply and positive numbers representing areas in which the moisture supply is greater than the demand. We also encourage people to get involved in community efforts to reduce wildfire hazards.”. Local environmental issues, risk assessment, and public opinion, National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) et al. Additionally, black identification was significant but not in the expected direction. According to Heim (2002, p. 1162), this has the benefit of creating a drought metric that “is a consensus product reflecting the collective best judgement of many experts based on several indicators.”. 2011). First, while a number of single indicator measures of drought exist, the USDM is a composite measure, meaning it does not use a single measure to indicate drought (Bachmair et al.

2016; Lazrus 2016; Bishop 2013). In the Mekong region during 1998-2017, Thailand was worst hit, suffering losses estimated at 52.4 billion USD.

While the short-term drought variables all had strong effects, long-term area moisture levels did not have a significant impact on individual awareness of drought. A two standard deviation increase in the number of weeks in drought, equivalent to about 16.5 weeks, results in a 6% increase in the probability of drought awareness. First, we included a number of variables measuring the severity of the water issues experienced by respondents, with the expectation that higher levels of severity would lead to a greater ability to identify drought correctly.

Interestingly, the model showed that females actually had statistically lower levels of policy preferences, but the effect size was relatively small. Those who endorse NEP recognize biophysical constraints on human behavior and have a “primitive belief” in the balance of human–nature relationships, while those who do not continue to subscribe to the prevailing worldview of human development and dominance (Catton and Dunlap 1980; Dunlap et al. 2011).

2016; Howe and Leiserowitz 2013). 2012; Joireman et al. First, we found that by far the largest factor in drought awareness is drought severity. Develop Water Reports that are sent to all stakeholders throughout the year.

All questions loaded in the expected direction.

Still, not all individuals perceive local weather in the same way. 2007). To distinguish our measure from the full NEP scale, we refer to the index used here as new ecological values (NEV). Expand hydrological monitoring in the valley to better understand hydrological patterns. Information on questions included in any indices used in the paper, as well as the results of the factor analysis, can be seen in the appendix. The survey instruments were pretested by GfK Custom Research, LLC, for respondent understanding, accuracy, and precision. Those who consume more information about water in general may also be able to identify drought at higher rates. The collaboration, the first of its kind, aims to raise awareness among the general public in the four MRC member countries – Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam – about the MRC’s flood and drought information systems and to build capacity for relevant officials on the use of online digital systems during 2020-2021. To verify that the composite measure is indicative of drought impacts, the USDM utilizes over 350 experts across the country that verify that the drought identifiers match with local conditions. Nani Barretto, the Co-Executive Director of the Hawai‘i Wildfire Management Organization (HWMO) added, “The difference about wildfires that people need to understand, compared to most natural hazard events, is that they are preventable. For the analysis here, we use the U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM) to identify drought [National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) et al. In general, there is a great deal of evidence that local environmental factors influence risk perception of environmental issues and desire for policy to mitigate those problems. While individuals who were aware of drought were predicted to have almost a half standard deviation higher level of risk perception, awareness only led to a 0.13 standard deviation increase in policy preferences. By matching zip code centroid coordinates with the climate data, we included a measure of the average value of the moisture index from 2003 to 2012 for each respondent.

The relationship between these indices and the ultimate designation of drought severity in the USDM is not fixed, however, but allows for flexibility over time, shifting with technological and scientific advancements (Svoboda et al. The results show that awareness of drought in one’s community significantly increases one’s risk perception when it comes to water issues, while actual drought severity has a significant but smaller effect.

2016; Medd and Chappells 2007). Individuals who are more liberal may care more about the environment in general and therefore may be more likely to pay attention to drought in their area. Additionally, frequency of drought and temporal proximity to drought also had statistically significant effects on drought awareness. 2002). Second, the USDM has an advantage over other composite indicators in that it also includes local knowledge in determining the level of drought (NDMC et al.

Importantly, the effect of awareness was larger than any of the other drought variables included in the model. The fall months of September and October are typically the most prone to wildfire starts in Hawai‘i. According to a United Nations report on Economic Losses, Poverty and Disasters, the last two decades have seen direct economic losses from climate-related disasters increase by up to 250 percent.
The results of both the analysis investigating the determinants of drought awareness and the analysis of the effects of drought awareness yielded some important findings. For this reason, we included dichotomous variables indicating whether the respondent was female, black, or Hispanic.

Drought awareness information and drought education resources to help you understand drought conditions, watering restrictions and water conservation. As mentioned, drought severity is perhaps the largest single predictor of correctly identifying drought. Hydrologic drought refers not to meteorological events alone but rather to how moisture shortages impact surface and subsurface hydrology. The Drought Monitor’s combination of quantitative and qualitative data as well as its purpose as a policy tool makes it a strong metric for the present study. 2014; Li et al. Logit predicting correct evaluation of drought. “Given the red flag warning now covering leeward areas, we can expect the percentages of area under drought conditions to increase in the next monitoring report,” said Neal Fujii, a hydrologist with the State Commission on Water Resources Management.

2002). Barretto also recommends a family emergency plan if you live in a drought or fire-prone area and said, “Be sure to include neighbors or loved ones who may not be able to escape a fire. The Google Trends data show that the first peak of drought awareness occurred when the drought condition reached its peak and the governor declared the drought emergency (January 2014). In this way, the USDM is actually a qualitative measure that combines a number of quantitative indices with local-level expertise to determine drought severity at the local level (Svoboda et al.

Power by Wordpress. And indeed, at least in the survey utilized here, knowledge of local drought seems to be quite poor.

2014; Li et al.