The Psycho-Anthropological Perspectives of Natural Hazards: Applicability of the ‘Protection Motivation Theory’ in Explaining Behavioral Responses Towards Tropical Cyclone Idai in the Chimanimani District of Zimbabwe

Abstract

This paper adopts a psycho-anthropological approach to explain individual behaviors in response to tropical cyclone Idai which made a landfall in the Chimanimani district of Zimbabwe in March 2019. Employing the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) as a lever of diagnosis, the study sought to demonstrate how psychological concepts and anthropological approaches can be infused to improve disaster preparedness. The evidence presented in the paper is based on an intensive ethnographic study conducted in Chimanimani district between November 2020 and July 2021, and which benefited from a variety of data collection techniques. The research findings reveal that beyond its utility in predicting individual protective behaviors towards a disaster, the PMT framework can be adopted as a tool with which postmortems of past disasters can be conducted to identify gaps and inform future disaster administration. The findings suggest that to be useful as a policy making and planning tool, the PMT should remain flexible, allowing for modifications to suite different socio-cultural contexts, including the flexibility to incorporate salient factors that might influence individuals’ cognitive mediating processes.