Adoption of Multilingual State Emergency Management Websites: Responsiveness to the Risk Communication Needs of a Multilingual Society

ABSTRACT

This article draws on the risk communication and responsiveness literature for theoretical context to investigate the adoption of multilingual websites at state emergency management agencies. It analyzes the 50 state websites on their multilingual presence of emergency-related information available to the public. It uses a binary logistic regression to model the determinants of their multilingual e-government usage for risk communication. The study reveals that state emergency management agencies adopt multilingual websites (1) to be responsive to the needs of populations who may not speak English, (2) to reduce state and immigrant vulnerability to disasters through effective risk communication, and finally (3) when better economic conditions prevail in their states. The study also supports the idea that public administrators are not driven by prevailing political and ideological sentiments in the states when making policies to communicate risk. By adopting multilingual websites, states are demonstrating that a multilingual society constitutes an important collective voice.

KEYWORDS:

• Risk communication
• responsiveness theory
• multilingual society
• immigrants
• foreign-born residents
• emergency management agencies
• limited English proficiency