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Published on: September 16, 2015
Why people do what they do to protect against earthquake risk: perceptions of hazard adjustment attributes
Michael K Lindell1, Sudha Arlikatti, Carla S Prater
1Hazard Reduction & Recovery Center, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-3137, USA. mlindell@archone.tamu.edu
Abstract:
This study examined respondents' self-reported adoption of 16 hazard adjustments (preimpact actions to reduce danger to persons and property), their perceptions of those adjustments' attributes, and the correlations of those perceived attributes with respondents' demographic characteristics. The sample comprised 561 randomly selected residents from three cities in Southern California prone to high seismic risk and three cities from Western Washington prone to moderate seismic risks. The results show that the hazard adjustment perceptions were defined by hazard-related attributes and resource-related attributes. More significantly, the respondents had a significant degree of consensus in their ratings of those attributes and used them to differentiate among the hazard adjustments, as indicated by statistically significant differences among the hazard adjustment profiles. Finally, there were many significant correlations between respondents' demographic characteristics and the perceived characteristics of hazard adjustments, but there were few consistent patterns among these correlations.
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