The Nature of “Natural Disasters”: Survivors’ Explanations of Earthquake Damage

论文摘要

The distinction between natural and human-made disasters is ingrained in everyday language. Disaster scientists have long been critical of this dichotomy. Nonetheless,virtually no attention has been paid to how disaster survivors conceptualize the causes of the disasters they experience. In this mixed-methods longitudinal study, 112 survivors of the2016–2017 Central Italy earthquakes completed questionnaires 3 and 16 months following the earthquakes, with the aim of assessing attributions of blame for the earthquake damage. In-depth interviews were also conducted with 52 participants at the 3-month mark to explore representations of causation for the earthquake damage. The distinction between disasters caused by nature and disasters caused by humans was not supported by survivors of the earthquake. In the longitudinal surveys, building firms and the State were assigned as much blame as nature for the earthquake damage, at both 3 months and 16 months after the earthquakes.Corroborating this complexity, in the interviews, the causes of the earthquake damage, rather than being understood as purely natural, were perceived as a complex mosaic composed of political, technological, natural, and moral factors.This empirical work shows that disaster survivors combine both nature-based and human-based explanations of disasters, rather than subscribing to one or the other. These findings have practical implications for disaster risk reduction and response.

论文目录

• 1 Introduction
•   1.1 Disaster Taxonomies
•   1.2 Empirical Literature on Disaster Taxonomies
• 2 Methods
•   2.1 Participants
•   2.2 Sample Recruitment
•   2.3 Quantitative Section:Questionnaires at Time 1and Time 2
•   2.4 Qualitative Section:In-Depth Interviews at Time 1
•   2.5 Data Analysis
• 3 Results
•   3.1 Quantitative Results
•   3.2 Qualitative Results
•     3.2.1 Attribution of Cause to Non-governmental Human Entities:Constructions,Private Citizens,and Technicians（Table 3,Column 1）
•     3.2.2 Attribution of Cause to Government Entities:State,Municipality,and Bureaucracy（Table 3,Column 2）
•     3.2.3 Attributions of Cause to Nature:Faults and Nature’s Strength（Table 3,Column 3）
•     3.2.4 Attribution of Cause to Spiritual and Abstract Entities:God,Chance,and Destiny（Table 3,Column 4）
• 4 Discussion
• 5 Conclusion

文章来源

类型: 期刊论文

作者: Alessandro Massazza,Chris R.Brewin,Helene Joffe

来源: International Journal of Disaster Risk Science 2019年03期

年度: 2019

分类: 工程科技Ⅰ辑,基础科学

专业: 地质学,地球物理学,安全科学与灾害防治

单位: Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology,University College London

基金: the municipality and health center of Amatrice,the psychiatric services of Rieti for their practical support,the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council for their financial support

分类号: X43;P315.9

页码: 293-305

总页数: 13

文件大小: 264K

下载量: 7