Opting Out: Over-Alerting and Warning Fatigue in the Era of Wireless Emergency Alerts

Abstract

While warning fatigue is commonly described among emergency management practitioners as a problem due to over-alerting, which leads to opting out, there has been limited research to define these concepts in a systematic manner that can inform policymaking around public alerting strategies, especially as they relate to Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA). In this study, we draw from semi-structured interviews with emergency managers and open-ended responses from surveys with emergency managers and members of the public, to develop definitions of ‘over-alerting’ and ‘warning fatigue’ and to identify the conditions that cause the public to ‘opt out’ of WEA messages. We conduct thematic content analyses to identify the dimensions of each concept, showing how they are represented by a variety of factors. We find that the antecedents to warning fatigue include alert frequency, relevancy and message content; symptoms of warning fatigue comprise mental strain, emotional and physiological stress and evaluative fatigue; the consequences of warning fatigue are threefold, including desensitization, complaining and opting out. By identifying the dimensions and factors that comprise warning fatigue, it becomes possible to determine what the true drivers are that affect decisions to turn off or tune out emergency alerts.