Fifteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

With more than half of Americans not properly prepared for disasters and afraid of climate change, it is instrumental that they overcome barriers to preparedness in order to not be left vulnerable to unpredictable, future disasters. Consequences of environmental issues, such as natural disasters stemming from climate change, have to be addressed so that individuals are not caught unprepared. Relying on the 2018 Chapman Survey of American Fears, this study explores how the fear of climate change affects mitigation decision-making and behavior by examining individuals’ fear of climate change and the consequent relationship with exposure to news media outlets to assess its effect on the public’s disaster preparedness. Previous research on this subject has evaluated the effectiveness when climate change is framed to convey fear and how the threat of climate change correlates to political and policy stances but leaves a gap in identifying the relationship between the fear of climate change and disaster preparedness. Among the interesting results, I discovered multiple news media outlets that have significant impacts on the fear of climate change and disaster preparedness, especially cable news networks. This study considers the implications of results in understanding individual behavior influenced by fear and news media and expands upon ramifications deriving from fear and unpreparedness.