Sources , Perceptions , Uses , and Values of Weather Forecasts

E very day, the U.S. weather enterprise collectively disseminates numerous weather forecasts to the U.S. public through various media. Considering the range of forecasts generated at a variety of spatial and temporal scales, the array of forecast providers and communication channels, and the size and diversity of the U.S. population, this equates to an enormous volume and multiplicity of information. The meteorological community knows intuitively that these forecasts are useful and of significant benefit to the public. However, apart from anecdotal evidence and vague notions, the community does not have a clear overall picture of how members of the public obtain, perceive, use, and value weather forecasts. Research on aspects of these issues has been conducted for specific geographical areas (e.g., Saviers and Van Bussum 1997; Lazo and Chestnut 2002), for specific events or weather phenomena and decisionmaking situations (e.g., Katz and Murphy 1997; Anderson-Berry et al. 2004; Stewart et al. 2004; Call 2005; Drobot 2007; Hayden et al. 2007; Morss and Wahl 2007; Zhang et al. 2007), or for certain demographics (e.g., CFI Group 2005). Private sector marketing studies have likely also investigated these issues, although results from such studies are not readily available. Other work has examined the needs of weather forecast users more generally and emphasized the importance of obtaining input from users (e.g., Pielke and Kimpel 1997; Hooke 2000; Pielke and Carbone 2002; WMO 2003; Morss et al. 2005, 2008a; National Resource Council 2006). These previous efforts bring some elements of the picture into focus, but each contributes only a portion of the montage. Based on empirical research, this paper seeks to draw a more complete picture of people’s attitudes and behaviors regarding day-to-day weather forecast information and how these vary among individuals. Specifically, we investigate the following four interdependent concepts: