Risk Perceptions, Race, and Hurricane Katrina

Abstract

This study examined differences across race and income in responses to warning messages associated with Hurricane Katrina. Surveys were administered to Katrina evacuees who had been relocated throughout the country, investigating perceptions of the seriousness of the crisis, motivation to evacuate, and preparations for the storm. Results suggest differences between Whites and non-Whites along these lines. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for considering race and poverty in audience responses to crisis messages, and the need to consider marginalized subpopulations in future crisis communication research.

KEYTERMS:

• crisis communication
• hazard
• Hurricane Katrina
• outrage

This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant number 0428216. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF.

Notes

There are several problems that exist with providing a term to describe those that left New Orleans due to Hurricane Katrina. The term displacee is used in this article. For a discussion on the use of this term, consult Masquelier (2006) and Spence, Lachlan, and Griffin (2007b).

Although 935 surveys were identified as usable, in many cases usable surveys contained a substantive amount of missing data. For this reason, several of the analyses on the following pages have fewer valid cases.

Chi-squared analyses were conducted comparing the categorical proportions of age, gender, ethnicity, and income. These have been omitted due to space considerations but are available by request from Kenneth A. Lachlan.

All respondents could be classified as evacuees given that respondents were obtained from various local relief centers around the country after the storm. All questions and categories that address issues of evacuation measure if the respondent attempted to evacuate before Katrina struck the coast.