Study On Public Needs And The Role Of Media In Weather Services

In the context of fast social and economic development in China, both understanding the public needs and requirement for weather information and services and incorporating media into weather information dissemination processes are the most important issues to get better social and economic values for the public weather service. Unfortunately, restricted by many limitations, the meteorological service has paid little attention on these issues. One important reason is a lack of reliable scientific data.Supported by the"Social and Economic Impacts Assessment of Beijing 2008 Olympic Weather services Forecast Demonstration Project", a large-scale scientific and systematic survey has been conducted for both Chinese inhabitants and foreign visitors as well as the main special users of weather information. Based on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of those data and information collected from internet, the users'needs and requirement as well as the role of media in public weather information dissemination processes are studied. A concept model for future Weather Information Services System is proposed.The main findings in this study can be summarized as the following1) According to the analysis of information collected from large-scale surveys and face-to-face survey on special user groups, it is found that although there are some specific needs from the public and different user groups also have different needs, the general public's needs and requirements do obey the social principles, such as the famous Maslow's Hierarchy of Need Theory. And the characteristics of those special needs and requirement can also be well explained by the Availability Theory in Behavioral Economics.2) In Public Weather Service Processes, the media is both user and collaborator of the meteorological department. It is, however, found that there are some problems in cooperation between them. On the one hand, the meteorological service has not provided needed information to the media due to the lack of well communication. And on the other hand, there are currently no well trained media staffs who are able to explain meteorology well to the public. As a result, media often provide inaccurate and sometimes even conflicted information to the public.3) It is urgently needed that a multidisciplinary effort among the media, social scientists and meteorological services to work together for the purpose of meeting the users'needs on meteorological information. A communication channel between meteorological services and media must be developed for this purpose. 4) A concept model of new Weather Information Services System is proposed in this study. This system is a nonlinear dynamic system which consists of three major components, i.e., the meteorological services, information dissemination services, and the user groups to form an end-to-end-to-end close circle.This study is conducted based on principles and basic theories of social sciences and economics sciences. The results obtained from this study can be applied by the meteorological services for the purpose of improving the social and economic values of the meteorological information.