Survivors perceptions of stakeholders and the 2009 South Pacific tsunami
Abstract
Purpose
Near-field tsunamis provide short warning periods of equal to 30 minutes, which can complicate at-risk individuals’ protective action decisions. In the face of a tsunami, people may turn to individuals such as friends, family, neighbors, or organizations such as the media to obtain warning information to help facilitate evacuation and/or to seek protection from the hazard. To characterize norms for protection action behavior during a near-field tsunami, the purpose of this paper is to explore American Samoan residents’ perceptions of four social stakeholder groups on three characteristics – tsunami knowledge, trustworthiness, and protection responsibility – regarding the September 29, 2009, Mw 8.1 earthquake and tsunami in American Samoa.
Design/methodology/approach
The social stakeholder groups were the respondents themselves, their peers, officials, and media. Mean ratings revealed that respondents rated themselves highest for tsunami knowledge and protection against the tsunami but rated peers highest for trustworthiness. In addition, officials had the lowest mean rankings for all three stakeholder characteristics. MANOVA analyses found that there was a statistically significant overall effect for occupation status on respondents’ perceptions of the four stakeholder groups and characteristics.
Findings
Employed respondents generally reported higher mean ratings for all stakeholder groups across the three characteristics than those that reported not having an occupation. Given the complexity of evacuation behavior, at-risk individuals may seek the assistance of other community members to support their protective action decisions.
Originality/value
The information gathered from this study provides local emergency managers with useful data that could support future disaster resilience efforts for tsunamis.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IMEE 0900662. The authors would like to thank the local interview team and participants for their contributions. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. None of the conclusions expressed here necessarily reflects views other than those of the authors.
Citation
Apatu, E., Gregg, C., Lindell, M.K., Hillhouse, J. and Wang, L. (2015), "Survivors perceptions of stakeholders and the 2009 South Pacific tsunami", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 24 No. 5, pp. 596-609. https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-11-2014-0230
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited