Heather Rosoff

The Dynamics of Evolving Beliefs, Concerns Emotions, and Behavioral Avoidance Following 9/11: A Longitudinal Analysis of Representative Archival Samples

September 11 created a natural experiment that enables us to track the psychological effects of a large-scale terror event over time. The archival data came from 8,070 participants of 10 ABC and CBS News polls collected from September 2001 until September 2006. Six questions investigated emotional, behavioral, and cognitive responses to the events of September 11 over a five-year period. We found that heightened responses after September 11 dissipated and reached a plateau at various points in time over a five-year period. We also found that emotional, cognitive, and behavioral reactions were moderated by age, sex, political affiliation, and proximity to the attack. Both emotional and behavioral responses returned to a normal state after one year, whereas cognitively-based perceptions of risk were still diminishing as late as September 2006. These results provide insight into how individuals will perceive and respond to future similar attacks.

Scenario Simulation Group Reactions to the Aftermath of the Great ShakeOut Magnitude 7.8 Earthquake

This paper demonstrates an innovative approach for learning about earthquake victims’ behavioral responses to an emergency situation in the immediate aftermath of an earthquake. Researchers developed a scenario following a magnitude 7.8 earthquake that leads to escalating complications described over eight episodes. Subjects were assigned to scenario simulation groups (SSG) and instructed to discuss how they would cope with problems as if they were experiencing the scenario. Subjects first discussed their reactions and potential decisions they might have to make as a group. They were then asked to individually record their behavioral intentions, cognitive reactions (concern) and emotional state (fear) in a survey instrument. Subjects’ responses were tracked over the eight episodes of the scenario. The SSG methodology yielded a more realistic understanding of how a respondents reactions and behavior change in the immediate aftermath of an earthquake. The implications of the SSG approach on disaster preparedness and response are discussed.

The Role of Behavioral Responses in the Total Economic Consequences of Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Air Travel Targets

U.S. airports and airliners are prime terrorist targets. Not only do the facilities and equipment represent high-value assets, but the fear and dread that is spread by such attacks can have tremendous effects on the U.S. economy. This article presents the methodology, data, and estimates of the macroeconomic impacts stemming from behavioral responses to a simulated terrorist attack on a U.S. airport and on a domestic airliner. The analysis is based on risk-perception surveys of these two scenarios. The responses relate to reduced demand for airline travel, shifts to other modes, spending on nontravel items, and savings of potential travel expenditures by U.S. resident passengers considering flying domestic routes. We translate these responses to individual spending categories and feed these direct impact results into a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the U.S. economy to ascertain the indirect and total impacts on both the airline industry and the economy as a whole. Overall, the estimated impacts on GDP of both types of attacks exceed

The effects of attacker identity and individual user characteristics on the value of information privacy

10B. We find that the behavioral economic impacts are almost an order of magnitude higher than the ordinary business interruption impacts for the airliner attack and nearly two orders of magnitude higher for the airport attack. The results are robust to sensitivity tests on the travel behavior of U.S. residents in response to terrorism.

Portfolio Analysis of Layered Security Measures

Past research indicates that people have strong concerns about their information privacy. This study applies multi-attribute utility theory to conceptualize the concern for smartphone privacy and examine how people value smartphone privacy protection. We also investigated how the value of privacy varied by the identity of a privacy attacker and individual user characteristics. Respondents were given a hypothetical choice between an encrypted smartphone and a regular one. The encrypted smartphone increases the level of privacy protection at the cost of lower usability, greater monthly service payments, slower speed, and additional inconvenience. Respondents were asked to simply make binary choices between hypothetical pairs of smartphone configurations. The results show that respondents were willing to make non-trivial sacrifices for smartphone privacy protection. Interestingly, specifying the identity of an attacker collecting information decreased the value of privacy protection compared to not specifying the identity of the attacker. We also observed effects of individual user characteristics, including general privacy concern, age, and self-reported political attitude, on the value of smartphone privacy protection. These results offer greater insight on how people value their privacy. We examined how people value information privacy in a multi-attribute context.We studied how information privacy concern depends on the privacy attacker identity.Respondents were willing to make non-trivial sacrifices for information privacy.Age, political attitude, and privacy concern significantly predicted privacy values.The values of privacy were dependent upon the attacker identity.

Security Games in the Field: Deployments on a Transit System

Layered defenses are necessary for protecting the public from terrorist attacks. Designing a system of such defensive measures requires consideration of the interaction of these countermeasures. In this article, we present an analysis of a layered security system within the lower Manhattan area. It shows how portfolios of security measures can be evaluated through portfolio decision analysis. Consideration is given to the total benefits and costs of the system. Portfolio diagrams are created that help communicate alternatives among stakeholders who have differing views on the tradeoffs between security and economic activity.

Media Disaster Reporting Effects on Public Risk Perception and Response to Escalating Tornado Warnings: A Natural Experiment: Media Disaster Reporting Effects

This paper proposes the Multi-Operation Patrol Scheduling System (MOPSS), a new system to generate patrols for transit system. MOPSS is based on five contributions. First, MOPSS is the first system to use three fundamentally different adversary models for the threats of fare evasion, terrorism and crime, generating three significantly different types of patrol schedule. Second, to handle uncertain interruptions in the execution of patrol schedules, MOPSS uses Markov decision processes (MDPs) in its scheduling. Third, MOPSS is the first system to account for joint activities between multiple resources, by employing the well known SMART security game model that tackles coordination between defender’s resources. Fourth, we are also the first to deploy a new Opportunistic Security Game model, where the adversary, a criminal, makes opportunistic decisions on when and where to commit crimes. Our fifth, and most important, contribution is the evaluation of MOPSS via real-world deployments, providing data from security games in the field.

Public Response to a Near-Miss Nuclear Accident Scenario Varying in Causal Attributions and Outcome Uncertainty: Public Response to a Near-Miss Nuclear Accident Scenario

Previous research has evaluated public risk perception and response to a natural hazards in various settings; however, most of these studies were conducted either with a single scenario or after a natural disaster struck. To better understand the dynamic relationships among affect, risk perception, and behavioral intentions related to natural disasters, the current study implements a simulation scenario with escalating weather intensity, and includes a natural experiment allowing comparison of public response before and after a severe tornado event with extensive coverage by the national media. The current study also manipulated the display of warning information, and investigated whether the warning system display format influences public response. Results indicate that (1) affect, risk perception, and behavioral intention escalated as weather conditions deteriorated, (2) responses at previous stages predicted responses at subsequent stages of storm progression, and (3) negative affect predicted risk perception. Moreover, risk perception and behavioral intention were heightened after exposure to the media coverage of an actual tornado disaster. However, the display format manipulation did not influence behavioral responses. The current study provides insight regarding public perception of predisaster warnings and the influence of exposure to media coverage of an actual disaster event.

Assessing U.S. Travelers’ Trade-offs for Aviation Safety Objectives: A Natural Experiment

Many studies have investigated public reactions to nuclear accidents. However, few studies focused on more common events when a serious accident could have happened but did not. This study evaluated public response (emotional, cognitive, and behavioral) over three phases of a near-miss nuclear accident. Simulating a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) scenario, we manipulated (1) attribution for the initial cause of the incident (software failure vs. cyber terrorist attack vs. earthquake), (2) attribution for halting the incident (fail-safe system design vs. an intervention by an individual expert vs. a chance coincidence), and (3) level of uncertainty (certain vs. uncertain) about risk of a future radiation leak after the LOCA is halted. A total of 773 respondents were sampled using a 3 × 3 × 2 between-subjects design. Results from both MANCOVA and structural equation modeling (SEM) indicate that respondents experienced more negative affect, perceived more risk, and expressed more avoidance behavioral intention when the near-miss event was initiated by an external attributed source (e.g., earthquake) compared to an internally attributed source (e.g., software failure). Similarly, respondents also indicated greater negative affect, perceived risk, and avoidance behavioral intentions when the future impact of the near-miss incident on people and the environment remained uncertain. Results from SEM analyses also suggested that negative affect predicted risk perception, and both predicted avoidance behavior. Affect, risk perception, and avoidance behavior demonstrated high stability (i.e., reliability) from one phase to the next.

Deterrence of Cyber Attackers in a Three-Player Behavioral Game.

Understanding air travelers’ values for aviation safety is essential to design effective and wellaccepted security measures. This study investigates changes in U.S. travelers trade-offs for passenger screening objectives using the occurrence of an international aviation incident (loss of Malaysian Airline Flight 370) as a natural experiment. We also examine how alternative screening procedures affect trade-offs between equity and safety concerns. Results show evidence for an enduring effect of the aviation incident on trade-offs between safety and other passenger screening objectives. Additionally, the use of different procedures to select high-risk passengers for enhanced screening altered the relative importance of the equity objective. Implications for the design of future airport security policies are discussed.