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Building community resilience is vital due to climate change and more frequent extreme weather events, which often force people to choose between evacuating or sheltering in place. The prevalence of stay-at-home orders and quarantine practices emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the need to understand how households access resources when mobility is restricted. This research investigates peer-to-peer resource-exchanging behavior during a shelterin- place response to a flooding event amid the pandemic through an online stated response survey (n=600). Latent class analysis reveals six distinct segments based on respondents’ resource sharing and accepting behaviors. Several household and social context variables help explain these behavioral clusters. Younger individuals and individuals with lower household income are generally more reluctant to accept resources from neighbors, while larger households are more inclined to share essential items. Additionally, social resources, trust in neighbors, and preparedness level can significantly influence individuals’ resource-exchanging behaviors. The findings highlight gaps for governmental agencies and nonprofit organizations to help address, emphasizing the need to ensure sufficient allocation of resources, especially for private items such as backup power sources, communication devices, and shelter, which respondents are least willing to share. This research offers valuable insights for future disaster preparedness programs and resource allocation strategies, aiming to improve community resilience and minimize negative impacts during shelter-in-place responses.
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Factors Influencing Willingness to Share Resources Postdisaster: A Cross-Cultural Comparison between US and Japanese Communities
When large-scale disasters occur, people often are left on their own to seek critical resources: food, water, medications, and other important items. Historically, government agencies have developed disaster preparedness strategies focused primarily on either the level of the individual or household or on the ability of government agents to provide relief to affected areas. Such approaches do not consider the potential for community members to share needed resources with one another—a crucial factor in survival when earthquakes, floods, landslides, and other disruptions to transportation and communications cut off whole communities from external aid. In this study, we used a simple random sample survey to measure households’ actual and perceived preparedness and assess individuals’ willingness to share essential resources following a large disaster using survey data gathered from three communities in the Pacific Northwest of the US (N 1⁄4 638; overall response rate 20.1%) and Nagoya, Japan (N 1⁄4 1,043; response rate 13.6%), two regions that expect to experience a magnitude 9.0 megaquake. Analysis of the survey data using an ordered response probit model found that the strength of social ties and levels of social trust strongly influence willingness to share in both regions. Differences between the Japanese and American responses suggest different dependencies on and roles for government agencies in the two societies, as well as differences in the types of resources that community members are willing to share, and with whom. Trust emerges as the most important factor across both study regions and for all resources. Willingness to share may be enhanced through trust-building interventions and should be regarded as an effective focus for preparedness efforts, especially if it is shown to be beneficial for a variety of social purposes.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2103713
- PAR ID:
- 10521777
- Publisher / Repository:
- ASCE
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Natural Hazards Review
- Volume:
- 24
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 1527-6988
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1061/NHREFO.NHENG-1836
