Disaster exposure and patterns of disaster preparedness: A multilevel social vulnerability and engagement perspective

This study examined how community vulnerabilities contextualized the impact of exposure to five major disasters in 2017 on individuals' disaster preparedness. We pooled two panels of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)'s National Household Survey in 2017 (pre-disaster) and 2018 (post-disaster) and further merged the data with 15 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Social Vulnerability Index factors to examine the moderating impact of county-level vulnerabilities. Latent class analysis was used to identify patterns of disaster preparedness based on six preparedness items defined by FEMA with a total of 10,045 individuals. Three groups were identified and named basic preparedness (BP) group, high preparedness: socially engaged (HP-SE) group, and high preparedness: advanced socially engaged (HP-ASE) group. A working sample with a smaller sample size was constructed to include 2,179 individuals from 92 counties with disaster declarations of Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, Hurricane Maria, Hurricane Nate, and California Wildfires in 2017. Multinomial logistic regression indicated that post-disaster respondents were more likely to be in the HP-SE relative to the BP group. Two-level multinomial logistic regression showed that post-disaster respondents in communities with higher percentages of single-parent households and those of no vehicles were less likely to be in the HP-SE vs. the BP group. Post-disaster respondents in communities with higher percentages of unemployment, no high school diploma, and occupied housing units with more people than rooms were less likely to be in the HP-ASE vs. the BP group. Post-disaster respondents in communities with higher percentages of older adults and mobile homes were more likely to be in the HP-SE vs. the BP group. The findings also highlighted the importance of social engagement in disaster preparedness disparities and the need for community-level intervention to promote individuals' disaster preparedness.