Not all extreme weather events are equal: Impacts on risk perception and adaptation in public transit agencies

Prior research widely emphasizes the role of risk perception in motivating proactive adaptation to extreme weather events. This study advances the literature by studying organizational risk perception and adaptation in a multi-hazard context. Instead of treating all weather types indiscriminately, we explicitly consider their unique characteristics and potential distinct effects on risk perception and adaptation in public organizations. The study distills three dimensions along which extreme weather hazards can vary—expected recurrence, impact dispersion, and rate of onset—and theorizes their relationship with organizational risk perception and response. The empirical analysis uses a national two-wave survey on the U.S. largest transit agencies in 2016 and 2019, merged with the National Center for Environmental Information Storm Events Database. We find that extreme weather events are not equal in creating impacts on organizational risk perception and adaptation. Specifically, extreme weather hazards conducive to risk perception and adaptation possess three characteristics: high expected recurrence, widespread impact dispersion, and rapid onset. Meanwhile, the results demonstrate signs of normalizing bias when extreme weather events with all the three characteristics occur at higher frequencies and in moderate intensity. The findings also suggest low sensitivity and overshadowed attention to slow-onset extreme weather events such as extreme heat.