The Moral Foundations of Preparedness: Public Opinion about Federal Disaster Preparedness Spending in the US

Abstract

What explains the absence of electoral incentives for preparedness spending? Previous research demonstrates that voters reward politicians for relief spending after disaster, but not for preparedness spending despite it being significantly more cost-effective than relief. This absence of political incentives for preparedness spending could exacerbate vulnerability to disasters. In this paper, we seek to understand how moral foundations and attribution shape individuals' attitudes towards disaster preparedness. Through an online survey experiment, we find that morality is associated with attitudes towards federal preparedness spending, with care and fairness positively related to support for preparedness spending, and ingroup positively associated with support for greater amounts of federal preparedness spending. The results have broad implications for the understanding of public opinion about disaster preparedness, demonstrating how moral values shape attitudes about preparedness initiatives but attribution of blame has little effect on public sentiment about these initiatives.