Choice of Cleanup Method in an Oil Spillage Emergency Response Based on Stated Preference Data

Correct, immediate and effective decision of emergency preparedness will powerfully mitigate and reduce the damage of ship oil-spill accidents. However, emergency decision-making is a complicated cognitive process influenced by many factors, which makes a significant impact on the effectiveness and efficiency of emergency plan implementation. An understanding of the reasons why people choose to implement a contingency plan in a certain manner is critical to the development of appropriate policies. In order to identify these influencing factors, this paper introduces a stated preference model to design a questionnaire for dealing with the determinants of spilled oil clean-up decision making. In this context, a survey of 240 emergency response officers from six major sea ports in China has been obtained. Moreover, a multi-logit model is utilized to generate an explanatory model, which shows how emergency response officers with different personalities make decisions when faced with different situations. The methodology can be used in other similar cases to provide valuable suggestions to improve the reliability and reasonability of emergency decision making.