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A model of household preparedness for earthquakes: how individuals make meaning of earthquake information and how this influences preparedness

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Abstract

One way to reduce the risk from earthquakes is for individuals to undertake preparations for earthquakes at home. Common preparation measures include gathering together survival items, undertaking mitigation actions, developing a household emergency plan, gaining survival skills or participating in wider social preparedness actions. While current earthquake education programmes advocate that people undertake a variety of these activities, actual household preparedness remains at modest levels. Effective earthquake education is inhibited by an incomplete understanding of how the preparedness process works. Previous research has focused on understanding the influence individual cognitive processes have on the earthquake preparedness process but has been limited in identifying other influences posed by the wider social contextual environment. This project used a symbolic interactionism perspective to explore the earthquake preparedness process through a series of qualitative interviews with householders in three New Zealand urban locations. It investigated earthquake information that individuals are exposed to, how people make meaning of this information and how this relates to undertaking actual preparedness measures. During the study, the relative influence of cognitive, emotive and societal factors on the preparedness process was explored and the interactions between these identified. A model of the preparedness process based on the interviews was developed and is presented in this paper.

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Notes

  1. Involving or taking place between individuals.

  2. Being or occurring within the individual.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Foundation for Research Science and Technology, New Zealand (now the Ministry of Science and Innovation), GNS Science, Canterbury Civil Defence Emergency Management Group and Hawke’s Bay Civil Defence Emergency Management Group. We would also like to thank local emergency management officers who assisted with setting up the research, and household residents from Napier, Wanganui and Timaru who volunteered to take part in the study as interviewees.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, Massey University, P.O. Box 756, Wellington, 6140, New Zealand

    Julia S. Becker & David M. Johnston

  2. GNS Science, P.O. Box 30368, Lower Hutt, 5040, New Zealand

    Julia S. Becker & David M. Johnston

  3. School of Psychology, University of Tasmania, Launceston, TAS, 7250, Australia

    Douglas Paton

  4. Institute for Health and Social Science Research, Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, QLD, 4701, Australia

    Kevin R. Ronan

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  1. Julia S. Becker
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Correspondence to Julia S. Becker.

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Becker, J.S., Paton, D., Johnston, D.M. et al. A model of household preparedness for earthquakes: how individuals make meaning of earthquake information and how this influences preparedness. Nat Hazards 64, 107–137 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-012-0238-x

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