5 - Worldviews, Risk Perceptions, and Causal Beliefs

Summary

Communities across the globediffer in history, culture, and beliefs; and these differences may help drive how communities process, learn from, and recover after a disaster. When faced with natural disasters, communities respond in diverse ways, with processes that reflect their cultures, needs, the type and extent of damage incurred and resources available to the community. Chapter 5 of Community Disaster Recovery: Moving from Vulnerability to Resilience articulates the ways in which internal community characteristics influence the disaster recovery processes and decisions made by local governments. Prior disaster experience and damage from the most recent disaster, along with perceptions of problem severity and future risk perceptions can influence the degree to which residents view disasters as an increasing and urgent problem for their local governments to manage. Finally, local government information dissemination during disaster recovery can serve two important roles: (1) garnering support for local government action and trust in government decisions, along with (2) incorporating a range of views beyond only technocratic experts to build innovative policy solutions.