Dr Ilona McNeill

Researcher
About
Dr Ilona McNeill

Dr Ilona McNeill is a Research Fellow in Social Psychology at the University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on:

1. Risk-mitigating behaviours: How can we best encourage and enable residents of hazard prone areas to increase the performance of risk-mitigating behaviours? How can the role of disaster management agencies in encouraging and enabling preparedness and planning amongst residents be improved?

2. Understanding individual differences: Dr McNeill’s work also focuses on understanding how individual differences in personality and self-regulation play a role in the performance of risk-mitigating behaviours.

Project leadership

The increasing frequency and complexity of natural hazards poses a challenge for community resilience. Communication and education of risk mitigation strategies play an essential role in building and maintaining resilience through preparation and planning by residents.

This project combined expertise in communication, social and consumer psychology, and disaster and emergency management. It identified barriers and enablers in residents’ decision making, preparing, and planning by examining residents’ intended use of different types of triggers for action during hazards. This included when to start evacuating and what information source to use, with the aim of trying to understand why some residents form a better-quality household plan with safer intended triggers than other residents.

27 Aug 2019
Australian communities face increasing losses and disruption from natural disasters. Disaster...
Improving the role of hazard communications in increasing residents’ preparedness for bushfires and floods: A summary of project findings
18 Sep 2018
This project focused on the evaluation of communication strategies and identification of barriers...
Ilona McNeill Conference Poster 2016
12 Aug 2016
Children form a vulnerable demographic in both the response and recovery phases of natural disasters
Does the Use of Information Sources Lead to Better Hazard Preparedness?
18 Aug 2015
In two studies amongst residents of bushfire and flood prone areas we examined whether residents...
Improving the role of hazard communications in increasing residents' preparedness and response planning
25 Aug 2014
Communication and education of risk mitigation strategies play an essential role in building and...

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