| China is a country with frequent disasters,and it is one of the few countries with the most serious natural disaster losses in the world.Frequent natural disasters(such as earthquakes,landslides,debris flows,etc.)have posed serious threats to the lives and property of residents in the disaster-prone areas.Due to the special natural and social environment in mountainous areas,the natural disasters are particularly obvious in these areas,and the residents are also facing greater challenges in responding to disasters.In addition,for the past few years,scholars’ studies on disaster-risk have gradually turned to explore the vulnerability of social and economic carriers in a disaster environment and how to deal with and prevent disaster risks.In fact,the government and managers are more likely to manage disaster risk from a macro perspective,while the ultimate point of the effective response to disaster risk is the public itself,and the role played by individuals or families in the whole disaster-risk management shouldn’t be ignored.In the realistic background of disaster threat and under the academic trend of refining the response subject,“bottom-up” exploration of the whole process of behavioral response to disaster risks from the perspective of the public is of great significance for raising the resilience of coexistence between mountain area societies and disaster risks,and promoting the construction of sustainable man-land relationship of mountain settlements in the context of disaster risks.Based on the above background,in the context of multi-disaster threats faced by rural residents in mountainous areas,the research adopted the theory of behavioral geography to construct the research framework of “disaster-risk communication→risk perceptions→ disaster prevention intentions→ behavioral responses” as the main path under the background framework of “capacity-opportunity”.The sample data of rural residents in Wenchuan and Lushan earthquake-stricken areas of Sichuan Province was determined by stratified sampling and equal probability random sampling,and combined with natural environment data such as location points of disasters,social economics,infrastructure investments and circumstances of disaster-risk management in communities and villages.The following two questions were specifically answered: First,how was the relationship among disaster-risk communication,risk perceptions,disaster prevention intensions and behavioral responses? Secondly,taking disaster prevention behavior of peasant households as the final destination,what factors were able to drive it to what extent? The specific process was as follows:Firstly,this study analyzed the distribution characteristics of earthquake and geological hazards in Sichuan Province and determined the typical representative disaster-risk characteristics in the sample area.Furthermore,the distribution pattern and characteristics of disasters in the sample counties were probed by using the geographical data of the disaster.The results showed that the residents in the sample counties were indeed facing the risk of multiple disasters.And,at the township scale,the impact of location points of disaster on the rural residents was preliminarily explored through the inverse distance between the location of residents’ houses and the location of disaster points in the township.Secondly,this paper measured the characteristics of interviewees’ disaster-risk communication in the four dimensions of content preference,channel selection,communication frequency and communication form,and appraised the levels of their disaster-risk perceptions in the four dimensions of possibility,threat,self-efficacy and response efficacy.Additionally,this study measured comprehensive disaster-prevention intentions and behavioral responses by the five specific targets: the preparation of emergency supplies for disaster prevention,the purchase of disaster insurances,the reinforcement of houses,the relocation decisions to avoid disasters and the intensity of comprehensive responses.Thirdly,focusing on the characteristics of residents’ disaster risk,this paper employed econometric models to probe the relationships among disaster-risk communication,risk perceptions,disaster prevention intentions and behavioral responses step by step.Lastly,based on the exploration results obtained above,path analysis model was used to mine the interaction relationship between typical factors and probe the causal chains that affect residents’ various behavioral responses to disaster mitigation.The ultimate goal of this research was to reveal the driving mechanism of residents’ behavioral response when facing disaster risks,so as to obtain some inspirations from the perspective of disaster-risk communication and risk perceptions that can motivate residents to take the initiative to prevent and avoid disasters under the reality that mountain residents in China were facing severe disaster risks.The main conclusions of the study were as follows:(1)There are distinct characteristics of residents’ disaster-risk communication,risk perceptions and behavioral responses.(1)Regarding the characteristics of residents’ disaster-risk communication: in terms of content preference,residents paid more attention to the information on disaster-risk management and the attitude of their relatives and friends to disaster risk,but less focused to their own knowledge and skills on disaster risk;the preferences of channel selection of obtaining information,in decreasing order,were: Media > Government > Friends and Relatives > No channels;the preferences of channel selection of feedback information,in decreasing order,were: Government > Friends and Relatives > No channels > Media;the communication frequency of obtaining information from different channels,in decreasing order,was: Media > Friends and Relatives > Government;In terms of the familiarity of communication forms,residents were more familiar with passive communication forms(such as disaster-warning card,disaster monitors and so on).(2)Regarding the perception levels of disaster risks,compared with the evaluation score of the perception of the disaster-risk event itself,the sampled residents had higher evaluation scores of the degree of mitigation that could be achieved.(3)Regarding the prevent disaster intentions,the vast majority of residents(accounting for 74.92%)have active intentions to prevent disasters.And the preferences of behavioral responses,in decreasing order,were: Relocation Decision > Building reinforcement > Disaster Insurance > Disaster-Prevention Preparation(accounting for79.82%,55.05%,46.48% and 24.46%,respectively),which showed that residents were more inclined to “once and for all” behavioral response to prevent disaster.(2)Residents’ disaster-risk communication almost affects the whole process of their self-risk management and is significantly related to their risk perception level and behavioral response.For the perception level of disaster risk,in addition to the perception of the possibility of disaster risk,various characteristics of disaster-risk communication other than communication frequency(such as multiple indicators of communication contents,channels and forms)were significant correlated with their risk perceptions(in addition to probability perceptions),which was particularly evident in the self-efficacy evaluation.In addition,the results showed that residents’ trust to stakeholders had a significant moderating effect on the process of “risk communication → risk perception”.In terms of the relationship between risk communication of residents and their disaster-prevention behaviors,multiple characteristics of disaster-risk communication of residents were significantly correlated with all designed behavioral responses,and the characteristics of disaster-risk communication significantly correlated with different behavioral responses were not quite the same.(3)There is a significant correlation between the perception level of disaster risk,the intention of disaster prevention and the behavioral response.In terms of the relationship between the disaster-risk perception and the disaster-prevention intention,the possibility and threat perception of disaster risk were significantly positively correlated with disaster-prevention intention,while the role of self-efficacy and response efficacy was not significant.In terms of the relationship between the disaster-risk perception and the behavioral response,the impact of the disaster-risk perception on the behavioral response was mainly reflected in the aspects of self-efficacy and response efficacy.In terms of the relationship between the intention of disaster prevention and the behavioral response,the residents’ intentions and behavioral responses to prevent disaster risks significantly affected the realization of part of their response behaviors,but did not take effect on all their response behaviors.Specifically speaking,the disaster-prevention intention was significantly positively correlated with the preparation of emergency supplies,the reinforcement of houses and the intensity of comprehensive responses,but not significantly correlated with other the purchase of disaster insurances and the relocation decisions.Further,this study found that,for the purchase of disaster insurance,the number of disaster experiences of residents significantly negatively affected the marginal utility of the disaster-prevention intension to the purchase of disaster insurance.The severity of residents’ disaster experience significantly negatively affects the marginal utility of the disaster-prevention intension to the relocation decision.(4)The driving mechanisms of residents’ behavioral responses to disaster risks were clear,and the driving paths of different disaster-prevention behavioral responses were distinguishing.Integrating various behavioral responses,residents’ behavioral responses to disasters were mainly driven by the following three paths: “risk communication → risk perceptions → disaster-prevention intentions → behavioral responses”,“risk communication → risk perceptions → behavioral responses” and“risk communication → behavioral responses”.By comprehensive comparison of the impact factors of the above paths,the top five overall ranking of effect utility were:Disaster-Prevention Intention > Self-Efficacy > Disaster Prevention in the Community > Communication Frequency with Relatives and Friends >Disaster-Related Knowledge = Disaster-Related Information Obtained from Relatives and Friends = Disaster Warning = Disaster-Prevention Card = Response Efficacy.In terms of response times,the factors that responded the most were,in order of overall ranking of effect utility,Financial Capital,Confidence in Coping with Disasters,Home Address,Number of Times of Disaster Experience,No Channel to Give Information Feedback,Severity of Disaster Experience,and Communication Forms such as Warning Board and so on. |
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