Disaster assistance: determinants of countries around the world contributing towards disaster donations

Abstract

The paper discusses the foreign responses after the three most devastating natural catastrophes of this century affecting individual countries, namely Hurricane Katrina in US, the Wenchuan Earthquake in China and the Haiti Earthquake. A two-staged process is used to analyse disaster aid decisions. The results from the cluster analysis show that out of 194 countries around the world, 35 were preferentially US-oriented, 47 Haiti-oriented, 33 China-oriented, 33 did not have any explicit orientation and 32 did not extend any assistance. The results from the analysis confirm the existent evidence of geographies of generosity which shows geopolitical orientation with the North American countries more likely to donate to US and the Asian countries to China. Haiti however did not have any particular appeal to the North American continent. The countries which are seen to implement a pure humanitarian approach to disaster aid have higher per capita GDP and general government consumption expenditure which means that foreign assistance depends on the state of the economy and larger public sector. A country with a higher human development index (HDI) is also more likely to grant donation. After a detailed examination of the motives behind international relief, the paper puts forward the need for a Global Information Network (GIN) that can assist in coordinating disaster activities, making them more transparent and improve the channels of communication.