Where do Individuals Seek Opinions for Evacuation?A Case Study from Landslide-prone Slum Communities in Mumbai

Abstract

Thousands of residents living in slums on small hillocks in Mumbai are at risk due to recurring landslides. The evacuation of these dwellers from the hills before the rainy season is considered essential to avoid the landslide risks. Although the city government has made several efforts to encourage residents to evacuate, few are willing to do so. The city government is, therefore, seeking effective risk communication strategies to encourage more slum dwellers to evacuate. Given this challenge, the present study examines the factors related to residents' evacuation behavior including their risk perception and evacuation intention. Unlike previous studies on household disaster preparedness behavior, which are predominantly cognitive modeling based and fail to address collective and social accounts of human behavior, the present study examines how various societal factors, such as social networks and group norms govern household evacuation decisions. Our fi ndings corroborate the hypothesis that social networks do play an important role in the evacuation decision. The study found that residents' risk perceptions are shaped to a great extent by their neighbors and cohesive group partners with whom they have direct and strong interconnections. However, residents' intentions to evacuate are largely infl uenced by the people who are indirectly and weakly connected with them, such as the members of social groups based on religion, caste and language. Some policy implications related to the fi ndings are discussed.

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