PReparing Older Adults: Communicating Threat risk In Virtual Environments (PRO-ACTIVE)

This award supports research on understanding and predicting decision-making among vulnerable populations in disasters. In most states in the US, more than one type of natural hazard can be present. Several population groups are considered especially vulnerable to these natural hazards, including marginalized racial and ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, low-income households, and older adults. The efforts undertaken in this study are built upon a nationwide survey by the project team on individual disaster preparedness and willingness to use emerging technology to improve preparedness measures, and are framed by well-established decision and cognition theories. Using survey findings, the research team will conduct disaster preparedness experiments across multiple hazards using Virtual Reality (VR). Given differences in risk perception for compounding effect, the project aims to gain insight into decision-making processes across various hazards and age groups. This project deploys and tests an innovative VR-based method to evaluate the decision-making process in disasters. The tasks are four-fold: 1) Examines differences based on the type of hazard using a VR platform to conduct experiments with older adult participants. 2) Investigates the mechanism by which optimal protective action decisions are made, whether fact- or emotion-based. 3) Explores the methodological contribution to advance disaster research with the use of a virtual environment to conduct experiments. 4) Assesses the acceptance of VR to improve preparedness among adults using a between-groups design. The study bridges two topical areas, focusing on hazards induced by natural phenomena and infectious diseases. The outreach activities include public engagement with practitioners on improving well-being of older adults in communities. The project establishes a partnership between academia and the private sector and contributes to undergraduate student capstone courses. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.