Households’ Evacuation Decisions in Response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

S-K. Huang, M. K. Lindell, C. S. Prater

This SMA examined 38 studies involving actual responses to hurricane warnings and 11 studies involving expected responses to hypothetical hurricane scenarios conducted since 1991. The results are generally consistent with those of Baker (1991) and, more recently, the Huang et al. (2012) and Huang (2014) abbreviated version of the Protective Action Decision Model (PADM) in concluding that official warnings, mobile home residence, risk area residence, observations of environmental/social cues, and expectations of severe personal impacts all have consistently significant effects on household evacuation. The SMA also identified other variables that have weaker effects on evacuation, perhaps via their effects on variables that directly affect evacuation. Finally, the SMA also indicates that the effect sizes from actual hurricane evacuation studies are similar to those from studies of hypothetical hurricane scenarios for 10 of 17 variables that were examined in both types of studies.