Salient Beliefs About Earthquake Hazards and Household Preparedness

Abstract

Prior research has found little or no direct link between beliefs about earthquake risk and household preparedness. Furthermore, only limited work has been conducted on how people's beliefs influence the nature and number of preparedness measures adopted. To address this gap, 48 qualitative interviews were undertaken with residents in three urban locations in New Zealand subject to seismic risk. The study aimed to identify the diverse hazard and preparedness-related beliefs people hold and to articulate how these are influenced by public education to encourage preparedness. The study also explored how beliefs and competencies at personal, social, and environmental levels interact to influence people's risk management choices. Three main categories of beliefs were found: hazard beliefs; preparedness beliefs; and personal beliefs. Several salient beliefs found previously to influence the preparedness process were confirmed by this study, including beliefs related to earthquakes being an inevitable and imminent threat, self-efficacy, outcome expectancy, personal responsibility, responsibility for others, and beliefs related to denial, fatalism, normalization bias, and optimistic bias. New salient beliefs were also identified (e.g., preparedness being a "way of life"), as well as insight into how some of these beliefs interact within the wider informational and societal context.

Salient Public Beliefs Underlying Disaster Preparedness Behaviors: A Theory-Based Qualitative Study

“…Similarly, the disadvantages of being useless and being unnecessary were identified in common. 64 In this study, like the studies by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA; Washington, DC USA), 62 people mentioned lack of concern about disaster preparedness, lack of time, and lack of information as barriers. However, several beliefs about the relationship between DPB and "preparedness anxiety" seemed to be unique to this sample of Tehran inhabitants.…”

Bam 2003 earthquake disaster: On the earthquake risk perception, resilience and earthquake culture – Cultural beliefs and cultural landscape of Qanats, gardens of Khorma trees and Argh-e Bam

“…However, during the time, the same culture may accommodate various earthquake risk perceptions and "social representations of earthquake risk" [15]. Co-existing relations among the "salient beliefs", earthquake hazards and earthquake preparedness, impact of beliefs on mitigation and disaster management were also examined [19,21]. Furthermore, aspects of the double-side impact of beliefs, rituals and cultural traditions on the earthquake disaster management and the resilience of communities were also highlighted [22].…”

“…During the last decades, disaster risk perception research accommodated both psychological and sociocultural approaches. There are a multitude of studies about the risk perception of earthquake disasters [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] and the way how people "frame" the hazard, accept it, take measures or not, or simply ignore it, and even deny it [1,9,11]. Moreover, cross-cultural comparisons on earthquake risk perceptions advised that the cultural constructs differ very much among countries and the local culture needs to be taken in account regarding its influence on the perception of earthquake risk [18].…”

Facing and managing natural disasters in the Sporades islands, Greece

“…Disaster management and community planning via public participation have become top priority for the authorities, stakeholders and organizations in many countries all over the world such as in the USA (Pearce, 2003, Haimes, 2012, El Salvador (Bowman and White, 2012), Australia and New Zealand (Gero et al, 2011;Djalante, 2012;Becker et al, 2012Becker et al, , 2013 China (Ye et al, 2012, Shi et al, 2012 and Iran (Amini Hosseini et al, 2009). In Europe there have already been some papers about this subject (Van Assche et al, 2011;Escuder-Bueno et al, 2012;Alexander, 2013), but no relevant studies have been conducted so far in Greece.…”

“…or caused by humans (war conflict, nuclear accident), shapes the human and natural environment and disrupts and affects the operation of the region at an economic and social level depending, of course, on its degree and extent (Becker et al, 2013;Yellman and Murray, 2013).…”