Hurricane Laura Homeowner Survey, in Strenghtening American Infrastructure (SAI) Homeowner Survey - Hurricane Laura

This EAGER proposes a new convergent methodological framework that scalably integrates existing NSF-investments to study household recovery processes and decisions in the wake of Hurricane Laura. Building upon the investigators’ expertise in research at the intersection of social science and engineering and their past experience studying the mitigation decisions of coastal households, this project includes: (1) a replicable survey methodology that leverages existing NSF investments and advances in data science, (2) a standardized yet modular survey instrument for testing site-specific and event-specific hypotheses, and (3) their application to Hurricane-Laura-affected communities in Louisiana to demonstrate the methodology. This demonstration will simultaneously generate data necessary to answer research questions such as: Do homeowners perceive the risk of catastrophic loss, or has our regulatory environment unintentionally fostered a false sense of security? How do experiences of direct losses versus indirect impacts influence the processing of information surrounding future risk and voluntary uptake of mitigation measures? How can an enhanced understanding of the influence of household economic and social dynamics on human reasoning reveal the interventions best suited to close the existing knowledge-action gap? This published project includes the survey instrument, anonymized datasets, coding memos and methodology reports.