Who prepares? Seismic risk, household income, and individual earthquake preparedness in California

Abstract

How does seismic risk influence individual disaster preparedness? Previous research demonstrates that differences in individual preparedness in at-risk communities can be attributed to a variety of individual-level characteristics such as disaster experience, risk perception and risk preferences, cognitive heuristics and biases, perception of hazards, and their ability to interpret information and understand probabilistic forecasts. However, less is known about how localized seismic risk affects individuals' preparedness for earthquakes. In this paper, we combine localized data about seismic risk with novel survey data from a sample of 680 Californian residents to test how individuals' seismic risks influence their individual preparedness for earthquakes. Our results demonstrate that seismic risk is positively associated with individual preparedness, while controlling for alternative explanations. On the other hand, household income is not a good predictor of individual earthquake preparedness. Our results demonstrate that individuals are generally responsive to the risks in their environment, while also providing several avenues for information campaigns to implement lessons from this study to further encourage preparedness.

Keywords

• individual preparedness
• earthquakes
• seismic risk
• hazards
• survey
• california