Household preparedness is essential for resilience-building and disaster risk reduction. Limited studies have explored the correlations between place attachment, self-efficacy, and disaster preparedness, especially in the east Asian cultural context. This study investigates the mediating role of self-efficacy between place attachment and disaster preparedness based on data from the 2018 Shandong General Social Survey (N = 2181) in China. We categorized the preparedness behaviors into three specific clusters: material, behavioral and awareness preparedness. Multiple linear regressions and the Sobel Goodman tests were employed to estimate the correlations with the control of necessary confounding variables such as disaster experience, socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. The results demonstrate that both the place attachment and self-efficacy are correlated with higher degrees of overall preparedness and all three types of preparedness, and self-efficacy plays a mediating role between place attachment and disaster preparedness. These findings highlight the importance of promoting place attachment and self-efficacy in the advocacies and outreach activities of disaster preparedness.