Abstract
Each year, emergency and disaster situations claim a heavy toll in human lives and economic loss. Civilian populations that are more aware and prepared for emergencies are more resilient. The aim of this study was to explore similarities and differences in risk perception of emergencies and disasters across different societies and its association with individual resilience. A cross sectional study that explored attitudinal factors, as expressed by diverse samples of target countries across Europe and beyond, took place during the months of January-February 2021. Diverse samples (N ≥ 500) of adults from 8 countries (Italy, Romania, Spain, France, Sweden, Norway, Israel, and Japan) were engaged in this study. This study used the Pictorial Representation of Illness and Self-Measure (iPRISM) tool to assess risk perception. The results suggest that for the overall sample (N = 4,013), pandemics were the risk of which participants showed the highest concern, followed by critical infrastructure fail, social disturbance, natural hazards, and extreme weather events. It was found that religiosity is associated with risk perception, with highly religious and non-religious reporting elevated risk perception (F = 5.735, df = 2, p = 0.003), however country-specific analysis revealed that this finding varies depending on local contexts. The analysis also revealed differences in risk perception depending on age and type of risk. The results of this study present that there are commonalities and differences between societies across Europe and beyond concerning societal resilience at large, including risk perception. The dependency of risk perception on local context suggests that a regional-based approach for disaster risk reduction may be called for to adapt and adjust to local socio-cultural characteristics of each population.
Highlights
Each year, emergency, and disaster situations claim a heavy toll in human lives and economic loss
This study provides a unique glance into risk perception in eight different societies representing different cultures, using the iPRISM tool
The results of this study demonstrate that societies have different risk perceptions depending on local contexts
Summary
Emergency, and disaster situations claim a heavy toll in human lives and economic loss. According to the Research Center for the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), over the past twenty years, 7,348 disaster events were recorded, claiming the lives of ∼1.23 million people and affecting a total of more than 4 billion people. These disasters led to a loss of ∼US$ 2.97 trillion worldwide [1]. It is widely accepted that households engaging in preparedness activities are more resilient, due to both increased awareness and actual adjustments that contribute to the survivability of family members in the aftermath of disaster [7,8,9,10,11,12]. The understanding of the factors associated with preparedness and resilience remain elusive, despite extended efforts to devise elaborated models to explain preparedness behavior [13,14,15]
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