Principles of Sustaining Community Response to Environmental Disaster

Abstract Popular accounts of people’s responses to disasters routinely report panic and psychological disorientation among disaster victims, but these reactions are quite rare. Instead, most people respond to crises by making the best decisions they can to protect persons and property, given their limited knowledge about the hazards they face and the situation that is unfolding, and their limited resources of time, money, and protective facilities and equipment. Current research is beginning to examine the timing and sequence of disaster response actions and the characteristics of warnings, environmental cues, and social cues that influence people’s perceptions of the threat, stakeholders, and alternative protective actions and, ultimately, their responses to a disaster. In addition, research on long-term hazard adjustments has generally found significant effects of three types of core perceptions (environmental threats, stakeholders, and alternative protective actions). This research also suggests the effects of hazard proximity, hazard experience, and hazard education programs on hazard adjustment adoption are mediated by the core perceptions.