Saturday, October 15, 2016: 2:55 PM
Florida households have suffered billions of dollars in losses due mainly to wind driven rainwater intrusion. Therefore, the effective delivery of salient vulnerability information coupled with practical mitigation options is formidable, yet essential to homeowners living in hurricane prone communities in Florida and beyond. Confronting the significant upfront costs of mitigation also remains a major obstacle to widespread adoption of resilience-enhancing measures. Therefore, an in-depth online survey was developed for households, using the latest scientific data, models, and risk assessments available. A database consists of contact information for over 400,000 households who had applied to the My Safe Florida Home (MSFH) Program beginning in 2007 and was acquired from the State of Florida. A random sample of 40,000 households was selected for a survey study in 2012. In the survey of over 1,700 Florida households, we found broad support for an array of statewide risk reduction initiatives, including stricter building codes and land use policies to enhance coastal resilience.
We have used ordered logistic regression analysis to find out whether financial incentives and/or vulnerability information encourages individual mitigation activity including low and high-cost roofing and opening protection options to reduce hurricane-related content/interior damages. The regression result shows that financial incentives, and not the presentation of vulnerability information, encourage individual mitigation activity.
It should be noted that these findings do not undermine the importance of risk communication, rather they illustrate the very real financial challenges that low-income homeowners face when confronting the upfront-costs of mitigation regardless of how motivated or informed they may be.
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