How do perceptions impact behavior during multi-hazard events? Citizens at the heart of multi-hazard resilience

In recent years, there has been a notable shift in research on how citizens perceive and respond to sudden and destructive hazards such as floods and earthquakes, alongside rising expectations of governments’ capacity to manage such events. These shifts highlight that disaster outcomes depend not only on hazard characteristics or institutional capacity, but also on how individuals perceive risk and translate that perception into action. Understanding why people act—or fail to act—under risk is therefore essential for building effective and socially grounded resilience strategies. In particular, identifying the perceptual and psychological drivers of behavior is critical for designing targeted interventions that reduce vulnerability.
Against this backdrop, research conducted by IIASA draws on behavioral economic sciences to examine how perception and psychological factors shape human behavior in disaster contexts and how various information sources such as social media shape perceptions.
Building on this perspective, IIASA adopts a multidisciplinary approach rooted in behavioral economics and social sciences to examine how citizens perceive risk, make judgments, and decide on actions in response to multi-hazard disasters as well as preferences on various risk mitigation strategies. The research focuses on the psychological and cognitive processes that shape adaptive behavior, as well as the ways individuals respond to hazards and policy interventions to support resilience strategies.

This research applies behavioral change theories, economic behavior theories, and well-established frameworks such as the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) to uncover the drivers of citizen behavior individually and collectively. Within PMT, the research specifically examines perceived severity and perceived vulnerability as key components of threat appraisal. By linking these theoretical frameworks to real-world responses using survey evidence, the research identifies which cognitive, motivational, and attitudinal processes encourage proactive action.
Citizen perceptions, judgments, and decision-making patterns are observed, analyzed, and linked to behavioral frameworks. This creates a collaborative process that not only generates actionable insights but also fosters ownership and trust in resilience strategies.
The CAT Group at IIASA uses Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to examine how interacting perceptual factors influence the way people interpret risks, make choices, and implement behaviors that enhance resilience. However, true preparedness goes beyond purely statistical models—it requires integrating insights on human behavior into policy and intervention design. This work is deeply integrated into the activities of the PARATUS project. PARATUS aims to develop an open-source platform for assessing multi-hazard risks and cascading impacts. A key pillar of the project is understanding how human behavior interacts with these complex impact chains.

This project demonstrates that adaptive resilience emerges when communities, behavioral scientists, and policymakers work together, ensuring that strategies reflect both empirical evidence and human decision-making dynamics.