Influences of Sense of Place on Farming Households’ Relocation Willingness in Areas Threatened by Geological Disasters: Evidence from China

Abstract

Scholars from environmental psychology, geography, disaster science, and sociology have recently focused attention on evacuation and relocation behaviors and influencing factors in hazard-threatened areas. However, existing studies are mainly focused on developed countries and the influence of individual characteristics, household characteristics, and the perception of risk of urban households on evacuation and relocation behaviors. Few studies examine developing countries and the influence of farmers' sense of place in geological hazardthreatened areas. Using statistics of farming households in an area threatened by landslides, this is a pilot study to explore the relationship of sense of place to the relocation willingness of farming households while controlling for other variables. The results show that: (1) Households with higher scores of place identity and place dependence are less willing to relocate, whereas place attachment has no significant relationship to household relocation willingness; (2) Risk perception dimensions, including probability, threat, and controllability have a significant relationship to household relocation willingness, while worry and fear of the unknown have no significant relationship; (3) Household characteristics, including income, whether a household has experienced economic loss from landslides, and social support are significantly correlated with household relocation willingness, while gender, age, experience, distance to hazard sites, size of household, children, older people, and housing material are not. The results for information and education are not robust. This study contributes to the current literature by improving the understanding of the relationship of sense of place to the relocation willingness of farming households in villages threatened by geological disasters in rural China.

Influences of Risk Perception and Sense of Place on Landslide Disaster Preparedness in Southwestern China

“…Households make corresponding behavioral decisions only when they perceive the threat of a disaster (Lazo et al 2015;Xu et al 2017b). Thus, household risk perception also affects their behavioral decisions, such as relocation and disaster preparedness (Xu et al 2017a). Lindell's (2013) review concluded that risk perception has a mixture of significant and insignificant correlations with hazard adjustment adoption.…”

“…By the end of 2017, there were 30 million impoverished rural people in China who mainly live in some concentrated contiguous poor areas. Affected by geology and topography, geological disasters are frequent in some rural communities in these areas, seriously threatening people's lives and property (Xu et al 2017a). Unlike other factors leading to poverty, geological disasters are characterized by their infrequent occurrence, their abrupt occurrence, and their high degree of severity.…”

“…These disasters caused 370 deaths, 35 missing people, 209 injured people, and a direct economic loss of USD 460 million (Geological Disaster Emergency Response Directing Center of Ministry of Land and Resources 2016). Moreover, disasters are becoming more numerous and widely distributed, increasingly leading to longer-term fears of disaster compared to before (Xu et al 2017a). Research on geological disasters is urgently needed to achieve the central government's poverty eradication target by 2020.…”

“…Many scholars have given great attention to the impact of disasters on households and their responses (including relocation, disaster preparedness, and so on) (Lindell and Perry 2000;Han and Nigg 2011;Tobin et al 2011;Lindell 2013; Hernández-Moreno and Alcántara-Ayala 2017; Xu et al 2017a). But many existing empirical studies have focused more on floods (Lindell and Hwang 2008;Lawrence et al 2014), earthquakes (Guo et al 2014;McClure et al 2015;Han et al 2017;Cui et al 2018), hurricanes (Peacock et al 2005), and volcanos (Guo 2008;Jones et al 2013), with little attention directed at landslides.…”

“…Most studies that have focused on landslides in recent years were conducted in urban regions. Few studies have dealt with rural populations located in landslide-threatened areas (Butler and DeChano 2012;Calvello et al 2016), especially areas exposed to disasters as well as poverty in developing countries (Xu et al 2017a).…”