Communication, neighbourhood belonging and household hurricane preparedness

Abstract

This paper reports on an examination of data on how local residents in Tuscaloosa, a mid-sized city in the state of Alabama, United States, responded to Hurricane Ivan of September 2004. The evaluation revealed that an integrated connection to community-level communication resources-comprising local media, community organisations and interpersonal networks-has a direct impact on the likelihood of engaging in pre-hurricane preparedness activities and an indirect effect on during-hurricane preparedness activities. Neighbourhood belonging mediated the relation between an integrated connection to community-level communication resources and during-hurricane preparedness activities. Neighbourhood belonging was determined to increase the likelihood of taking preparedness actions during Hurricane Ivan, but not prior to it. In addition, we discovered an interesting pattern for two different types of risk perceptions: social and personal risk perceptions. Social risk perceptions increase the likelihood of taking preventative steps before a hurricane while personal risk perceptions are positively related to engaging in preventative action during a hurricane.

Household and Community Disaster Preparedness in Japanese Provincial City: A Population-Based Household Survey

“…In fact, these variables were considered as predictors of a "neighborhood bond", according to the results of the National Survey on Lifestyle Preferences 2007 conducted by the Cabinet Office of Japan (Quality-of-Life Policy Bureau (Cabinet Office), 2007). "Neighborhood belonging", similar in concept to the neighborhood bond, was found to be a possible predictor of the actual preparedness actions of the community affected by Hurricane Ivan in 2004 (Kim & Kang, 2010). Thus, the strength of the neighborhood bond may be regarded as a forecaster of potential mutual aid in a community based on the household characteristics listed above.…”

“…Accordingly, there should be a complementary relationship between household-and community-level preparedness, i.e., a lower level of household preparedness would be associated with a higher level of community preparedness, and vice versa. Some studies indicate common predictors of different levels of preparedness, such as people's subjective norms (Motoyoshi, Takao, & Ikeda, 2008;Paek, Hilyard, Freimuth, Barge, & Mindlin, 2010), and concern about disasters (Eisenman et al, 2006;Motoyoshi et al, 2008), and connectedness to a story-telling network (Kim & Kang, 2010), indicating a positive rather than a complementary relationship between the two types of preparedness. However, the association has not been fully understood.…”

Building Community Resilience to Disasters: A Way Forward to Enhance National Health Security

“…There is evidence that both the sense of community created by these relationships and the individual characteristics of the relationships (i.e., the characteristics of those involved) help improve disaster preparedness (Kim & Kang, 2010).…”

Gender, Intra-Household Dynamics, and Household Hurricane Preparedness: An Exploratory Study Employing a Dyadic Interview Approach

“…As illustrated in Table 1, most of the preparedness activities incorporated in such studies do not include the relational activities that females tend to think are important. One exception in Table 1 is Kim and Kang (2010), a study in which the investigators specifically set out to understand the relationship between interpersonal connections and household natural hazard preparedness. The likely reason that female natural hazard preparedness decision makers are considered to have lower preparedness levels than male decision makers is because the relational activities that females think are important-and thus activities in which females are likely to engage-are not among the preparedness activities listed in nearly all studies.…”