AbstractThe goal of this research was to examine students’ risk perception of hurricanes and hurricane-related storms to address a critical gap in the literature. Participants were asked to rate their perceptions of a tropical storm, tropical depression, and category 1 through 5 hurricanes on five dimensions and define the storms based on wind speed. Lastly, individual differences in sex and growing up on the coast were examined to determine whether they explain differences in risk perceptions. Findings showed that participants’ perceptions of category 1 through 5 hurricanes followed a linear pattern and each pair was perceived to be significantly different. However, participants rated tropical storm and tropical depression as more severe than a category 1 hurricane and were unable to define any of the storms based on wind speed. In fact, coastal natives were less accurate at defining the storms and believed the low-tier storms to be less severe than non-coastal natives. This research is the first to show that people implicitly understand the Saffir-Simpson Scale that defines category 1 through category 5 hurricanes, but not the lesser-tiered storms. The present work demonstrates a need for enhanced education of hurricanes, as students do not make important distinctions at the lower-end of the hurricane scale.

中文翻译：

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对飓风风暴的隐含而不是明确的理解

摘要本研究的目的是检查学生对飓风和与飓风有关的风暴的风险认知，以解决文献中的一个关键空白。参与者被要求在五个维度上评估他们对热带风暴、热带低气压和 1 到 5 类飓风的看法，并根据风速定义风暴。最后，检查了性别和在海岸长大的个体差异，以确定它们是否解释了风险感知的差异。调查结果表明，参与者对 1 到 5 类飓风的看法遵循线性模式，并且每一对都被认为存在显着差异。然而，参与者认为热带风暴和热带低气压比 1 级飓风更严重，并且无法根据风速定义任何风暴。实际上，沿海当地人在定义风暴方面不太准确，他们认为低层风暴不如非沿海当地人严重。这项研究首次表明人们隐含地了解定义 1 级到 5 级飓风的萨菲尔-辛普森等级，但不了解级别较低的风暴。目前的工作表明需要加强对飓风的教育，因为学生在飓风等级的低端没有做出重要的区分。