Triadic embeddedness structure in family networks predicts mobile communication response to a sudden natural disaster

Kinship networks are a fundamental social unit in human societies, and like social networks in general, provide social support in times of need. Here, we investigate the impact of sudden environmental shock, the M s 7.0 2013 Ya’an earthquake, on the mobile communications patterns of local families, which we operationalize using anonymized individual-level mobile telecommunications metadata from family plan subscribers of a major carrier ( N = 35,565 people). We demonstrate that families’ communications dynamics after the earthquake depended on their triadic embeddedness structure, a structural metric we propose that reflects the number of dyads in a family triad that share social ties. We find that individuals in more embedded family structures were more likely to first call other family plan members and slower in calling non-family ties immediately after the earthquake; these tendencies were stronger at higher earthquake intensity. In the weeks after the event, individuals in more embedded family structures had more reciprocal communications and contacted more social ties in their broader social network. Overall, families that are structurally more embedded displayed higher levels of intra-family coordination and mobilization of non-family social connections.