@article{TEXTUAL,
      recid = {5818},
      author = {Van Dijcke, David and Wright, Austin L. and Polyak, Mark},
      title = {Public response to government alerts saves lives during  Russian invasion of Ukraine},
      journal = {PNAS},
      address = {2023-04-24},
      number = {TEXTUAL},
      abstract = {War is the cause of tremendous human suffering. To reduce  such harm, governments have developed tools to alert  civilians of imminent threats. Whether these systems are  effective remains largely unknown. We study the  introduction of an innovative smartphone application that  notifies civilians of impending military operations  developed in coordination with the Ukrainian government  after the Russian invasion. We leverage quasi-experimental  variation in the timing of more than 3,000 alerts to study  civilian sheltering behavior, using high-frequency  geolocation pings tied to 17 million mobile devices, 60% of  the connected population in Ukraine. We find that, overall,  civilians respond sharply to alerts, quickly seeking  shelter. These rapid postalert changes in population  movement attenuate over time, however, in a manner that  cannot be explained by adaptive sheltering behavior or  calibration to the signal quality of alerts. Responsiveness  is weakest when civilians have been living under an  extended state of emergency, consistent with the presence  of an alert fatigue effect. Our results suggest that 35 to  45% of observed civilian casualties were avoided because of  public responsiveness to the messaging system. Importantly,  an additional 8 to 15% of civilian casualties observed  during the later periods of the conflict could have been  avoided with sustained public responsiveness to government  alerts. We provide evidence that increasing civilians’ risk  salience through targeted government messaging can increase  responsiveness, suggesting a potential policy lever for  sustaining public engagement during prolonged episodes of  conflict.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/5818},
}