Online local natural hazards education for young adults: assessing program efficacy and changes in risk perception for Texas natural hazards

Risk perceptions can influence how people prepare, react, and respond to a natural hazard. For dependent populations with increased vulnerability, such as youth, adolescents, and young adults, hazard education programs can influence their risk perceptions and increase their hazard awareness. However, most school curriculum does not include in-depth formal natural hazards education; Texas curriculum in secondary schools, for example, does not typically cover local natural hazards or their impacts in-depth due to other curriculum priorities. Thus, students may not be receiving potentially life-saving information on their local natural hazards or how to plan for or respond to disasters. In response, this research presents a formal, online, and youth-centric natural hazard educational (NHE) curriculum that examines the curriculum's effects on risk perception and subject matter proficiency using a local pilot study with college students as proxies for high school adolescents in Texas. Results suggest that the curriculum content improved overall natural hazards knowledge in participants (p < 0.01) and that participants with higher post-curriculum scores demonstrated higher risk perception and hazard awareness. These findings demonstrate how exposure to natural hazards educational programs can increase hazard awareness and coping capacity in young adults and adolescents.