Disaster Anthropomorphism: A Novel Method for the Conflicts Between Disaster Prevention and Sustainable Development Based on a Mechanism Description

Conflicts between disaster and sustainable development broadly exist in the world, with lack of methods and techniques about disaster prevention. In this study, a new method for disaster mitigation is described, i.e., anthropomorphism of disasters. Anthropomorphism on natural disasters was not deeply studied in the previous research and it may have impact on the intentions of preventive behaviors among ordinary people due to stronger risk perception. Therefore, three studies are conducted to verify our hypothesis. This paper has verified the positive influence from anthropomorphism on the intention of preventive behaviors (Study 1) and have confirmed the mediating role of risk perception (Study 2). Finally, results in Study 3 showed when disaster is severe, the anthropomorphism will have positive impact on the preventive behaviors, whereas when the severity is low, the anthropomorphism will decrease the preventive behaviors. These findings might have broad applications in the field of disaster prevention.