Modeling household adoption of earthquake hazard adjustments: a longitudinal panel study of Southern California and Western Washington residents

Abstract

This research, aimed at advancing the theory of environmental hazard adjustment processes by contrasting households from three cities in a high seismic hazard area with households from three other cities in a moderate seismic hazard area. It identified seven types of stakeholders namely, the risk area residents and their families (primary group), the news media, employers, and friends (secondary group), and federal, state, and local governments (tertiary group), and explained why they are relevant to the adoption of seismic hazard adjustments. It also addressed three key attributes— knowledge, trustworthiness, and responsibility for protection—ascribed to these multiple stakeholders and the relationships of these stakeholder attributes with risk perception, hazard intrusiveness, hazard experience, gender, resource adequacy, fatalism and hazard adjustment adoption. It was specifically concerned with the effects of nested interactions due to trust and power differentials among the seven stakeholders, with the self reported adoption of 16 earthquake protective measures at two points in time (1997 and 1999). Some of the key findings indicate that risk perception, gender, fatalism, city activity in earthquake management and demographic characteristics did not significantly predict hazard adjustment adoption. However, all stakeholder characteristics had significant positive correlations with risk perception and hazard adjustment, implying a peripheral route for social influence. Hazard intrusiveness, hazard experience, and stakeholder knowledge, trustworthiness, and responsibility affected the increased adoption of hazard adjustments by households. Particularly important are the peer groups’ (employers, friends and family) knowledge, trustworthiness and responsibility. These findings suggest, hazard managers cannot count only on the federal, state, and local government advisories put out through the news media to affect community decisions and thereby households’ decisions to take protective actions. Instead, hazard managers need to shift focus and work through peer group networks such as service organizations, industry groups, trade unions, neighborhood organizations, community emergency response teams, faith-based organizations, and educational institutions to increase the knowledge, trustworthiness and responsibility of all in the peer group. This will assure higher household hazard adjustment adoption levels, thus facilitating a reduction in post disaster losses and recovery time.