Research Papers
Clarifying why people take fewer damage mitigation actions than survival actions: How important is cost?
John McClure, Ronald Fischer, Andrew Charleson, Matthew J Spittal - Victoria University of Wellington
Previous research shows that people who prepare for earthquakes carry out more survival actions (like getting a medical kit) than damage mitigation actions (like strengthening a house). There is little research that explains this difference, but one suggestion is that it’s because mitigation actions cost more than survival actions. This project examines this issue with households and businesses, and examines how much participants report completing eight mitigation actions and four survival actions, their estimate of the costs of the actions, and their attributions (explanations) for why they have not carried out the actions. Damage mitigation actions included actions that mitigate damage to the building (e.g., check foundations) and actions mitigating damage to contents (e.g., attach bookcases). Households completed fewer mitigation actions than survival actions, and businesses completed fewer completed structural mitigation actions than contents damage mitigation actions and survival actions. Participants also completed fewer actions they rated as more expensive than less expensive actions. With households there is also a relationship between the perceived cost of 4 of the 12 actions and the probability of carrying out the actions.
With companies there is no such relationship. Businesses were invited to set goals of actions to complete 3 months later. Again the cost of the action did not relate to either their choice of actions to complete or the actual completion of the actions. On the attributions measure, for both households and businesses, the perceived cost of the actions was not among the most frequent attributions for failing to complete the actions. More frequent attributions were: I haven’t thought about it; It’s not a priority, and the belief that it would make no difference. There were small differences in these attributions for different type of actions. Participants indicated that in relation to the immediate effects of earthquakes they thought more about injury than business damage and losses but in relation to long-term effects they think equally about both types of loss. The results suggest that the cost of preparation actions is one factor hindering preparedness actions, particularly for households, but that several other factors are more important.