Well it was mine conclusion after doing a literature review of over 15 international scientific research papers. (very boring to read...) Getting people in that "aha" moment is the hard part. Once people "get it", than it becomes much easier.

Campaigns to educate citizens can actually be counterproductive. Many people will trust the government and its message less, when they think the government exaggerate the danger (they think of secret agendas, etc). Some people will not prepare because they think the government is doing enough, because of the campaigns. But obviously no education won't work either. It's a much harder issue than most people think. Many studies (british, swedisch, dutch) have show very little or a reduction of prepardness due to due to goverment prepardness campaigns. (Does not have to mean it applies to other countries) So what would a effective meassure? I haven't found any really effective onces. (bad) Personal experians with disasters seems to be the most effective, but should rescue personal stand on the side during a emergency to "teach citizens a lesson"? Not a likely scenario...

I have worked with the emergency communication department of the Dutch ministry of internal affairs and also the emergency communication people for a "safety region". Plenty of people giving the emergency preparedness information, are them self not prepared. The percentage is lower than the public, though. This is also reflected by many emergency workers (fire, medical, law enforcement) in mine country.

Reward preparedness with discounts on licenses and fees for using the outdoors, launch ramps, and other public facilities.

The whole preparedness thing is often too much for many people to handle. Even if they have a bit of interest, it appears too complicated. And if they google 'survival', they get lots of strange stuff with weird people: knife people, gun people, the Burt Gummer overkill effect. To them, it looks scary. People don't usually embrace scary.

If you want to get your point across to someone, try to make it ONE point, not fifty. And make it personal to them, a need that they can understand. Once they can see the need and prepare for it, they can take one more step and deal with something else.

K.I.S.S.

Another problem to overcome with some people is what I call the "gambler mentality" - someone into behavioral psychology might know the right name.

The gambler will lock onto a reward or favorable outcome and will ignore everything that doesn't lead to the reward, even if the reward is not the most likely outcome. Vegas slot machines are the obvious example but there are plenty more in the way people leveraged up to buy houses before the recession etc, not to mention the ways that financial institutions managed their risk portfolios prior until last year. As long as the reward is achievable it overshadows all other outcomes, however probable.

My guess is that preparedness in general faces at least a mild form of this in most people: it requires some time and a little money, and most people can't see "being prepared" as a reward, just as an expense. It's that reward/expense perception that's hard to change and until you do there's a bit of the gambler mentality involved.

first issue with this idea, is the limit target group. Preparedness should be a aimed at all citizens of a country, not just outdoor people. (outdoor people also seems to be better prepared...)So rewards should be aimed for the general public.

Any rewarding system would require the government to:
- Quantify "preparedness". They could make a list of essential equipment (although people are different, so will there equipment be), but what about plans and mental preparedness?
- Inspect people being "prepared", before giving a reward. (if not, it would be open to fraud)
- Checking/Maintain people's "preparedness", by inspecting people's preparedness every X year. If not, than there would be no system to maintain the level of preparedness.
- Funds to pay for the system and the rewards (read: taxpayer)
- Getting multiple government levels to work with each other. (read: time consuming)

that the list i can list before having morning coffee. Besides rewards as a tool has shown mixed results. Rewards generally causes people to do things for the reward itself, not the thing we want them to do (being prepared). So it is highly likely than some people would do the minimum to get the reward and not actually prepared



Good point Susan, but that is something what is known. That's why the government is educating people for the most likely events, telling people what effect a disaster can have on them and what they can do. It does not seem to be really effective. A problem with such a approach is that, it is not always possible to know what effect a disaster can have and what people can really do to protect them self. So it get impersonal rather quickly.

I'm just pointing out that is really isn't that easy for a goverment to get people to prepare. It's easy to come up with a plan, but turning a plan in to a workable and effective solution is a lot harder than most people think. It is hard enough to get family and friend to prepare, now think of a entire country on a limited budget...

I think you bring up an interesting problem PC2K.
I find a lot of people think about emergency preparations in terms of the whole "End Of The World As We Know It" situation.
But real world emergencies are more likely to be accidents that result from a chain of small events.

I try to get people to think about being prepared for the little emergencies.
Stuff like getting a bad cut at work, having a flat tire on a seldom traveled road, and all that kind of stuff.
It seems like a good place to start people off and if you can get the attitude about being prepared at that level it becomes easy to expand it to cover having a weeks groceries, water and a way to cook food in case the power goes out and other preparations for larger emergencies.

One thing I have seen are schools getting the children to do inventories on their own homes. They look for things like escape routes if there is a fire, muster points where they go to if they have to evacuate, first aid kits, first aid training.
The school also taught them how to do a hazard assessment as part of it.
The odd part of doing this was that the parents learned from their children because it was a homework assignment the children needed help with to complete.

The whole "I don't trust the government" aspect of public preparedness is interesting, I'm catching some of that right now as I talk to groups about preparing for possible Howard Hansen dam floods this winter, (and the next 3-5 yrs). We are trying to prepare people for flooding in an area that hasn't experienced any in modern memory (since the 50s) - 2-10 feet through a valley with alot of people, critical infrastructure and industrial that wasn't there in the last flood. It's a simple equation, a matter of how much water a dam can hold, a matter of basic hydraulics - if it rains enough the rain will come downstream and flood xx hectares to yy depth. But the response of some (not all) is one of suspicion - that County bureaucrats are using the problems with Howard Hansen for their own ends - for money, for control of the population, but ultimately for a very illogical messing up society in a very significant way. I would consider these people to be raving space loons if it wasn't part of my responsibility to disavow them of their ideas, and get them to prepare themselves and their families for moving out of the way of all that water. Otherwise, they may be coming to the Red Cross, and expecting food and shelter. In the end all I can do is warn them to prepare, and those that listen should have a bed of their own ready for their kids above the floodline, those that won't will have a tougher time. Its difficult to get through to people so mad at their government that they won't act to help themselves.

I think this is a good point. If someone were to look at where I am now in terms of preparedness and didn't know the individual steps I took to get here, I could easily imagine it would appear to be a near Herculean feat not to mention a ridiculously expensive endeavor. And even though most people suggest taking small steps, if the steps aren't laid out it can appear to be too much of a task.

I'm not sure if it's the official psychosocial title, but in Biology classes this tended to fall under Game Theory. Which I was kinda/sorta lost in.

That's the same scenario as myself and a lot of my friend's situation with our offroad vehicles. People think we have sunk a lot of money into building them, when most of the stuff was done over time with free or cheap parts.

My BOB and home emergency supplies are getting the same way. Add one thing here and there and it adds up over time.