Co‐evolving supportive networks and perceived community resilience across disaster‐damaged areas after the Great East Japan Earthquake: Selection, influence, or both?

Abstract

AbstractAfter the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in March 2011, the new community currency experiment for supporting disaster recovery, Fukkou Ouen Chiiki Tsuka, was introduced by community‐based organizations in these earthquake‐damaged areas. However, little is known about how perceived community resilience coevolves with interactions in the disaster recovery process. Using Simultaneous Investigation for Empirical Network Analysis techniques, this study shows the coevolutionary dynamics between perceptions of community resilience and the formation of supportive links among residents through a community currency (“Domo”) in Kamaishi. This study also provides policy implications for how mutual reinforcement between community residents’ engagement in network establishments and building a sense of community resilience among those affected functions as a potential mechanism for facilitating disaster recovery.