Factors Contributing to Disaster Evacuation: The Case of South Korea

Abstract

There has been increasing interest in effective evacuation in response to natural disasters, particularly in understanding human evacuation behavior. It is important to determine the factors affecting evacuation decision making to promote prompt evacuation. This study focuses on the effects of past experiences on evacuation behavior in South Korea, especially the evacuation drill experience. Additionally, the influence of demographic and socio-economic characteristics on evacuation behavior is considered. After collecting data through telephone surveys, t-tests and logit regression models were used to evaluate the data. The results reveal that an evacuation drill experience is positively related to making a decision to evacuate. The results also confirm that certain demographic factors, such as age and household size, as well as socio-economic factors, such as household income and housing type, influence evacuation decisions. Besides these, knowing the location of a shelter is another factor that improves the chances of evacuation. Finally, discussions and suggestions for increasing participation in evacuation drills are provided.

Adaptive Disaster Risk Assessment Combining Multi-Hazards With Socioeconomic Vulnerability and Dynamic Exposure

“…In terms of the predictor used to assess evacuation behaviour on Sint Maarten, this study also has some limitations; due to the restrictions in the post-disaster environment, we did not ask several potential predictors of evacuation in the survey. Amongst those are household income; high income increases the probability of people going to a hotel rather than to a public shelter (Lee et al, 2018;Smith and McCarty, 2009), or in the case of Sint Maarten, the possibility to evacuate the island before hurricane landfall. Prior evacuation behaviour has also been reported as a good predictor for future evacuation (Thompson et al, 2017).…”

Evaluation of Evacuation Strategies According to the Travel Demand: The Case of Nuclear Research Reactor HANARO’s EPZ

“…It is assumed that individuals in the EPZ followed the evacuation strategies because the goal of this study is the comparison of evacuation strategies on traffic control methodology and evacuation routing. The education and exercise drills about evacuation should be implemented before the accident for effective evacuation [21].…”

“…For this purpose, it was assumed that the main roads and networks for evacuating to the Daejeon Convention Center were established and that people could evacuate through a given route (Figure 1). Knowing the location of shelters and moving to a defined route through evacuation drills has a positive impact on evacuation [21]. This is because when the residents evacuate, it is possible for traffic control such as traffic signals at intersections to be performed more efficiently if the residents travel along a given route rather than a random selection of routes (Figure 2).…”

Evacuation dilemmas of coastal households during cyclone Amphan and amidst the COVID-19 pandemic: a study of the Southwestern region of Bangladesh

“…Evacuation scenarios vary with the type of disaster, such as cyclones, tsunamis, and earthquakes. Despite the importance of the evacuation decision during disasters, few efforts have analyzed or predicted the factors influencing individuals’ choices to evacuate (Yabe et al 2019 ; Lee et al 2018 ). As a result, it is critical to consider the individual’s perception regarding available options for cyclone evacuation procedures during a pandemic (i.e., COVID-19).…”