GNGTS 2023 - Atti del 41° Convegno Nazionale

Session 2.3 GNGTS 2023 Identifying critical publics in Tsunami Risk Communication: a cluster analysis A. Cerase 2,1 , A. Amato 1 , L. Cerbara 3 , M. Crescimbene 1 , L. Cugliari 1,2 , F. La Longa 1 1 National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, 00153, Rome, Italy TS1 2 Department of Communication and Social Research, La Sapienza University, 00198, Rome Italy 3 Institute of Research on Population and Social Policies, National Research Council, 00185, Rome, Italy ABSTRACT Since the early beginnings, one of the main objectives of studies on risk perception has been to identify the cognitive, social and cultural factors that affect the public's understanding of risks, with the aim on the one hand of improving public and risk managers' understanding of risks, and on the other hand of fostering stakeholders' participation in the decision-making process, with the ultimate goal of improving the quality of decisions taken individually and collectively to address and manage a certain type of risk (Fischhoff, 1995; Lofstedt, 2003; Fischhoff, 2013; Balog‐Way, McComas & Besley, 2020; Rickard, 2021). These objectives are divided into three basic dimensions: persuasion, education, and participative decision making (Bostrom, 2003). This task is particularly difficult for risks characterised by low probability and high impact, such as earthquakes (Bostrom et al., 2008), and even more so, tsunamis. Tsunami risk is indeed one of the most difficult risks to communicate and to deal with as its low frequency (with time intervals in decades or centuries) is often associated with a very limited knowledge by citizens, local authorities, and journalists; so, figuring out people’s level of understanding and awareness of this risk becomes an imperative need in order to handle risk communication strategy and improve risk mitigation effectiveness (Cerase et al. 2019; Rafliana et al., 2022 Cugliari et al., 2022a; Cugliari et al., 2022b). Previous research highlighted a generally low tsunami risk perception in most countries (Kurita et al., 2007; Bird & Dominey-Howes, 2008; Alam et al., 2016; Couling, 2014; Salah & Sasaki, 2016; Cerase et al., 2019; Cugliari et al., 2022a; Cugliari et al., 2022b), with limited exception for population who had a (recent) tsunami history (Arce et al., 2017; Buylova et al., 2019; Harnantyari et al., 2020; ) and / or a cultural memory of past events (Arias et al., 2017; Wei et al., 2017; Goeldner-Gianella et al., 2017; Akbar et al., 2020). Furthermore, research efforts related to tsunami risk communication remain fragmented, characterised by a general lack of recognition on the reciprocal relationship of risk perceptions and risk communication, despite its pivotal relevance in providing a shared and common understanding of tsunami risk among all the actors involved into the risk governance framework (Rafliana et al.,