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How Do Perceptions Of Risk Communicator Attributes Affect Emergency Response? An Examination Of A Water Contamination Emergency In Boston, Usa, Amy Hyman, Sudha Arlikatti, Shih-Kai Huang, Michael K. Lindell, Jeryl Mumpower, Carla S. Prater, Hao-Che Wu

Research, Publications & Creative Work

A water main break that contaminated the Boston area's water distribution system prompted a four-day “boil water” order. To understand risk communication during this incident, 600 randomly sampled residents were mailed questionnaires, yielding 110 valid responses. This article describes how perceptions of different social stakeholders influenced whether respondents complied with the Protective Action Recommendation—PAR (i.e., drank boiled water), took alternative protective actions (i.e., drank bottled water or/and self-chlorinated water), or ignored the threat (i.e., continued to drink untreated tap water). Respondents perceived technical authorities (i.e., water utility, public health, and emergency management) to be higher on three social influence attributes …