Formation Mechanisms And Impacts Of Rural Households’ Disaster Prevention And Mitigation Behaviors Under Mountain Disaster Risk

China is a large mountainous country with the most frequent mountain disasters in the world,and a large size of population are threatened by those disasters.Mountain disasters pose a great threat to the sustainable development of population,resources,environment,and socio-economics in the vast mountainous areas,hindering the realization of poverty alleviation in the new era,rural revitalization,and ecological civilization construction.Facing thousands of small and mediumsized mountain disasters every year,rural households taking the initiative is conductive to improve the efficiency of national disaster risk management and increase household well-being.Therefore,it is necessary to promote the effective public participation in disaster prevention and mitigation in ecologically fragile and underdeveloped rural areas.However,there is a paucity of research on farmers’ disaster prevention and mitigation behaviors under mountain disaster risk.Based on the background above,this dissertation takes Chongqing as the research area to explore the current situation,formation process,and impact of rural households’ disaster prevention and mitigation behaviors under mountain disaster risk.Chongqing has a good representation because of the large number of disaster hazards,extensive distribution areas,multiple types,as well as distributed in densely populated areas.According to the level of economic development,population density,disaster distribution,and convenience of the surveys,841 farmers from 60 rural communities in 6 districts(counties)were selected as research samples by stratified random sampling.Guided by the protection motivation theory,protection action decision model,social interaction theory and sustainable livelihoods approach,this study constructs and verifies a "psychological perception-social interaction two-path decision-making and well-being impact framework",which helps to better understand the formation mechanisms and impacts of disaster prevention and mitigation behaviors in China.This study holds the opinion that the internal psychological perception and external social interaction will promote farmers’ disaster prevention and mitigation behavior,and the participation of disaster prevention and mitigation behavior will further improve their subjective welfare.The specific results are as follows.First,this study utilizes domestic/global disaster databases and existing literature to conduct a descriptive analysis of mountain disaster risks,mountain disasters in Chongqing,and disaster prevention and mitigation behaviors.At present,the mountain disasters in China are characterized as “large-sized disasters occur occasionally and small-sized disasters occur frequently”,with a wide range of potential hazards and a large number of people exposed to mountain disaster risks.Mountain disaster risk has both natural and social attributes,including inevitable,cyclical,geographical,sudden,and uncertain.In this study,four types of behaviors in two categories are selected for empirical analysis,including self-protection behavior(pre-disaster evacuation,knowledge and material preparedness,and disaster insurance purchase)and ecological protection bahavior(eco-friendly behavior).The surveys find that all four types of disaster prevention and mitigation behaviors have high willingness but low participation.Second,this study verifies the psychological perception formation path: “disaster risk information – psychological perception – disaster prevention and mitigation behavior decision-making”,using analysis of variance,correlation analyses,and multiple regression models.The empirical results reveal that disaster risk information and/or prevention and mitigation information from the environment,government,internet,and peer channels differ significantly in the dimensions of information accessibility,comprehension,and trust.Among them,information from peers score higher on three dimensions,implying that peer information is of great value to rural households.Mountain disaster risk information and disaster prevention and mitigation information are generally closely related to psychological perception variables,i.e.,information from different sources and contents may perturb rural households’ subjective belifies about disaster risk,their abilities,behaviors,and stakeholders.Risk perception,behavior appraisal,and stakeholder perception are all shown to be strong predictors of farmers’ participation intentions.The results of the descriptive analysis showe that the barriers to the transformation of willingness into behavior mainly include lack of livelihood capital,unavailable access to participation,and lack of triggers.Third,this study employs the Spatial Durbin Model(SDM)to verify the social interaction path of behavior formation: “peer information – social interaction – disaster prevention and mitigation behavior decision-making”.The empirical results find that the characteristics and behaviors of other farmers living in the same village would significantly contribute to one’s adoption of disaster prevention and mitigation behaviors.From an economic perspective,peer’s behavior generates a spatial spillover effect through social interactions.In addition,based on the existing literature and the social interaction game theory model,this study proposes and verifies that social learning and social norms are the mechanisms underlying the social interaction path.Fourth,this study explores the impacts of disaster prevention and mitigation behaviors on rural households’ subjective well-being using a propensity score matching approach.Combining research background with government reports,sense of security,sense of gain,and happiness are selected as valid proxies for the subjective well-being of households.Under disaster risk,a sense of security is a subjective perception and evaluation of one’s state of safety,which can accurately reflect the quality of life;a sense of gain focuses on the "sense of participation" or “achievement of self-value”;happiness is a highly generalized and comprehensive concept,which provides an assessment of overall satisfaction with life.The empirical results showe that,compared with farmers who did not participate in any disaster prevention and mitigation behaviors,rural households who have adopted self-protection or ecological protection actions gain a significantly higher sense of security.However,there is no significant difference in their sense of gain and happiness.In other words,participation in disaster prevention and mitigation behaviors significantly increase the subjective security,but did not have a significant effect on sense of gain and happiness.Finally,this study makes a conclusion and proposes five policy implications to elaborate on how to effectively promote farmers’ participation in disaster prevention and mitigation behaviors.The implications include:(1)clarifying the importance of farmers’ participation in disaster prevention and mitigation;(2)improving the accessibility,comprehensibility,and professionalism of disaster-related information;(3)enhancing farmers’ awareness of risk,efficacy,and responsibility;(4)increasing farmers’ sustainable livelihood capital in multiple ways and intensifying government support services;and(5)utilizing social interaction effect to improve the efficiency of publicity in disaster prevention and mitigation.