Related Experiment Videos
Self-efficacy and barriers to disaster evacuation in Hong Kong
Elizabeth A Newnham1,2, Satchit Balsari3, Rex Pui Kin Lam4
1FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, USA. enewnham@hsph.harvard.edu.
Objectives:
To investigate specific challenges to Hong Kong's capacity for effective disaster response, we assessed perceived barriers to evacuation and citizens' self-efficacy.
Methods:
Global positioning system software was used to determine random sampling locations across Hong Kong, weighted by population density. The resulting sample of 1023 participants (46.5% female, mean age 40.74 years) were invited to complete questionnaires on emergency preparedness, barriers to evacuation and self-efficacy. Latent profile analysis and multinomial logistic regression were used to identify self-efficacy profiles and predictors of profile membership.
Results:
Only 11% of the sample reported feeling prepared to respond to a disaster. If asked to evacuate in an emergency, 41.9% of the sample cited significant issues that would preclude them from doing so. Self-efficacy was negatively associated with barriers to disaster response so that participants reporting higher levels of self-efficacy cited fewer perceived barriers to evacuation.
Conclusions:
Hong Kong has established effective strategies for emergency response, but concerns regarding evacuation and mobilisation remain. The findings indicate that improving self-efficacy for disaster response has potential to increase evacuation readiness.