THE ROLE OF RESOURCES IN PREPARING FOR EMERGENCIES

AND ITS IMPACT ON AN INDIVIDUAL’S CHOICE; AN

EXPLORATION IN COMMUNITY, CAPACITY, AND CHOICE

Tera Maher, MS

University of Nebraska, 2023

Advisor: Dr. Christine Toh

An important challenge in developing technology solutions for disaster pre-planning and

mitigation are humans’ natural tendency to focus on the most salient stimuli to make a

decision and to place a higher value on the present versus any future point in time, among

many other cognitive biases. Further compounding this complex relationship between hu-

man cognition and disaster preparedness is the recognition that a one-size-fits-all approach

will not meet the needs of every circumstance as individuals and communities have many

different challenges with different access to resources. While prior work in design has begun

to explore possible approaches for designing solutions for emergency management, more

empirical research is needed to better understand individuals’ motivations and values in

emergency management pre-planning. To address this research gap, qualitative interviews

were conducted with participants from one medium-sized midwestern city in the United

States to understand how community members think about preparation and make deci-

sions about adopting preventative technologies. The results of the qualitative analysis

reveal that there were 5 main themes that are important to consider when developing tech-

nologies for emergency preparedness; importance of communication during emergencies, the

role of technology in emergency management, unequal access to resources, reaction instead

of preparation, and motivation to engage in community preparedness and response. From

the themes found in this first study a second experimental study was developed to bet-

ter understand the impact of resources and its influence on decision making in a highly

controlled setting using eye-tracking to investigate the cognitive elements of this process.

Through this study there were implications on how an individual’s access to resources has

a cognitive impact on perceived value of items. A lack of data exists on how to develop
technologies to be used prior to emergencies to mitigate their negative impacts, and how

to best elicit these complex needs from individuals in communities. This thesis seeks to

address this knowledge gap.