Fuente: Sustainability - Revista científica (MDPI) Sustainability, Vol. 18, Pages 5596: Sustainable Community Resilience: Linking Perceived and Actual Household Disaster Preparedness
Sustainability doi: 10.3390/su18115596
Authors:
Rasa Smaliukiene
Svajone Bekesiene

From a public management perspective, actual household disaster preparedness is an important component of sustainable community resilience because it strengthens households’ capacity to withstand, adapt to, and recover from disruptions. However, despite it being an important community-level dimension, the mechanisms linking perceived and actual household disaster preparedness are not well understood. Although prior research has demonstrated the close association between preparedness and socio-attitudinal factors, the mechanisms through which these factors influence preparedness-related behavior are unclear. This study examined whether perceived disaster preparedness is associated with actual household disaster preparedness, and whether this relationship is mediated by institutional trust, civic participation, and perceived well-being and moderated by gender and education. The analysis was based on data from an omnibus survey of 550 adults in Lithuania and employed moderated serial mediation models using PROCESS Models 6 and 58. The findings showed no direct association between perceived disaster preparedness and actual household disaster preparedness; instead, the relationship operated indirectly. Civic participation was the only significant simple mediator: higher perceived disaster preparedness was associated with lower civic participation, which in turn was associated with lower actual household disaster preparedness. Institutional trust and perceived well-being did not mediate this relationship. The negative association between institutional trust and actual household disaster preparedness was stronger among more highly educated respondents, whereas the positive association between civic participation and actual household disaster preparedness was stronger among men than among women. These findings suggest that differentiated preparedness strategies are needed to strengthen actual household disaster preparedness as a foundation of sustainable community resilience, and, more specifically, of the long-term sustainability of communities facing recurring risks and disruptions.