<p>With intensification of climate change, the public needs to adopt protective behaviors to cope with increasingly frequent extreme precipitation events especially in less rainfall areas. However, existing studies mainly focus on the positive behaviors such as emergency preparedness and disaster evacuation, and rarely explore hesitant behaviors that are prone to lead to emergency failure. This study constructs a theoretical framework to examine influencing factors of emergency response hesitancy based on protective motivation theory and risk communication theory. This study verifies the relevant hypotheses derived from the theoretical framework with survey data collected in four northern Chinese cities in 2023 and regression method. It is found that threat perception, trust and comprehension of early warning information mitigate individual’s response hesitancy in extreme precipitation events, while the response cost would enhance it. Secondly, individual risk preference negatively moderates the relationship between threat perception and response hesitancy. Public satisfaction with government’s emergency management positively moderates the relationship between trust and response hesitancy. This study can provide meaningful insights into analyzing hesitant behaviors in emergency responses. It also offers a reference for the government to formulate effective measures to integrate early warning and response.</p>