Risk perceptions of tourist business managers.

Bibliography: p. 340-341

Reprinted from The Environmental Professional; 1994; Vol. 16; p. 327-341

At times, business executives responsible for tourist businesses must temporarily shut down operations because of disaster events. What is their perception of such risks? When required, how well prepared are they to evacuate their business facility? In-depth face-to-face interviews with 185 executives in 9 tourist communities indicated the following relationships among risk perception, social characteristics, and extent of disaster evacuation planning: 1) managers who perceive higher levels of risk are more likely to engage in disaster evacuation planning, although organizational characteristics better predict the extent of such planning than does risk perception or any other individual quality; 2) although the relationships are weak, risk perception is positively associated with certain managerial characteristics; and 3) the risk perceptions of individual managers also covary with certain characteristics of their firms such as mission, size, complexity, and type of sponsorship. The most parsimonious multivariate model, which accounted for nearly one third of the variance in risk perception, is comprised of six variables: whether or not the firm had been evacuated previously, the degree to which the community in which the firm is located reflected a disaster subculture, the frequency with which the managers attended professional meetings, whether or not the manager had formal disaster training, an index of disaster evacuation planning activities, and organizational mission