Stay in Risk Area: Place Attachment, Efficacy Beliefs and Risk Coping

Psychometric properties of Indonesian slums dwellers' place attachment

Social scientists have long considered place attachment to be an important factor in promoting environmentally sustainable behaviours among individuals. Raymond and colleagues have developed a five-factor place attachment measure, comprising place dependence, nature dependence, place attachment, family bonding, and friendship bonding, that encompasses most of the differentiations made and that has been amply tested for validity and reliability. However, the bulk of these confirmatory studies have been conducted in Western societies, neglecting people in the Global South and particularly people living in unstable, environmentally fragile regions such as slum areas. This study aims to fill this omission by testing the psychometric qualities of the five-factor place attachment measure in Indonesian slums using a dataset collected by the Resilient Indonesian Slums Envisioned (RISE) project. The dataset consists of a random sample of 700 respondents, living in slum areas of the cities of Bima, Manado, and Pontianak. We split the dataset into two and run factor analyses in EFA (N = 325) and CFA (N = 375) modes. Most notably, our results suggest a four-factor scale, in which place and nature dependences are merged into a single dimension. This finding seems logical considering that those living in urban slums are likely to have their natural surroundings, such as a river and its banks, as part of their living space. Overall, our study extends the use of place attachment to disaster-prone slum contexts that are often overlooked and, thus, supports the line of research that promotes environmental sustainability among people especially vulnerable to ecological changes.

The impact of residential greenness on psychological distress among Hurricane Katrina survivors

Residential greenness may support mental health among disaster-affected populations; however, changes in residential greenness may disrupt survivors' sense of place. We obtained one pre- and three post-disaster psychological distress scores (Kessler [K]-6) from a cohort (n = 229) of low-income mothers who survived Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Greenness was assessed using average growing season Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) in the 300 m around participants' homes at each time point. We used multivariable logistic regressions to evaluate two hypotheses: 1) that cross-sectional greenness (above vs. below median) was associated with reduced psychological distress (K6≥5); and 2) that changes in residential greenness were associated with adverse mental health. When using EVI, we found that a change in level of greenness (i.e., from high to low [high-low], or from low to high [low-high] greenness, comparing pre- and post-Katrina neighborhoods) was associated with increased odds of distress at the first post-storm survey, compared to moving between or staying within low greenness neighborhoods (low-high odds ratio [OR] = 3.48; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.40, 8.62 and high-low OR = 2.60; 95% CI: 1.05, 6.42). Results for NDVI were not statistically significant. More research is needed to characterize how residential greenness may impact the health of disaster survivors, and how these associations may change over time.

Effect of individual characteristics, risk perception, self-efficacy and social support on willingness to relocate due to floods and landslides

People may have to leave their home, environment, region and country because of disasters or disaster risks. Effective and efficient disaster risk reduction activities involving the community can reduce disaster risks and enable people to reside more safely and peacefully in their environment. The objective of this study was to investigate whether individual characteristics, risk perception, self-efficacy and perceived social support were correlated with the willingness to relocate due to floods and landslides. The data were collected from 947 people residing in Gümüşhane Province (Türkiye) using a survey. In the study, a total of ten models were tested with the help of ordinal logistic regression analysis. Consequently, the participants' willingness to relocate due to landslides was determined to be higher than the willingness to relocate due to floods. University students and people with chronic diseases and flood and landslide experiences had a greater willingness to relocate. Residence duration and informal social support were negatively correlated with relocation willingness. Those who believed that they could protect themselves in the event of a flood and landslide were more likely to relocate. Among risk perceptions, probability increased relocation willingness mostly due to floods, while fear increased relocation willingness mostly due to landslides. This study attempted to provide policy makers and scientists insight into disaster risk reduction and disaster risk communication related to relocation.

Social Stability Risk Assessment of Disaster-Preventive Migration in Ethnic Minority Areas of Southwest China

Disaster-preventive migration (DPM) is an important method for disaster risk management, but migration itself entails a potential social stability risk. This study took County D in Yunnan Province, one of the counties most severely threatened by geological disasters in China, as an example to construct an indicator system of social stability risk factors for disaster-preventive migration based on a literature survey and in-depth interviews. The system consists of 5 first-level risk factors and 14 s-level risk factors. The social stability risk of DPM in County D was assessed using a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method based on experts’ weights. The results showed that the overall social stability risk level of disaster-preventive migration in County D is ‘high’. In terms of importance, the five first-level risk factors were ranked as follows: public opinion risk > compensation risk > livelihood recovery risk > cultural risk > geological disaster risk. Among the risk factors, the level of public opinion risk and compensation risk appeared to be high, whereas that of livelihood recovery risk, cultural risk and geological disaster risk resulted to be medium. To our knowledge, this paper is the first research to evaluate the social stability risk of DPM; it not only enriches the theories of social stability risk assessment, but also has important guiding significance for people relocation and resettlement in Chinese ethnic minority areas.

Does Trust Help to Improve Residents' Perceptions of the Efficacy of Disaster Preparedness? Evidence from Wenchuan and Lushan Earthquakes in Sichuan Province, China

Disaster preparation can reduce the impact of an earthquake on residents. Residents are more likely to undertake disaster preparedness if they perceive it to be effective. However, few studies have analyzed the influence of trust on this perception. This study surveyed 327 households in areas stricken by the Wenchuan and Lushan earthquakes to explore these issues. Trust was divided into government trust, emotional trust, and social trust, while the efficacy of disaster preparedness was divided into self-efficacy and response efficacy. A partial least squares structural equation model was used to explore the influence of trust on perceptions of the efficacy of disaster preparedness. The results show that: (1) government trust can directly increase perceived efficacy and indirectly increase self-efficacy via emotional trust; (2) emotional trust can directly increase self-efficacy; (3) social trust can directly reduce self-efficacy while indirectly increasing it by increasing emotional trust. This study deepens our understanding of the relationship between trust and perceptions of the efficacy of disaster preparedness. This study can provide inspiration to improve risk communication and construct systems of community-based disaster-prevention.