Abstract
Enhancing building owners’ earthquake risk preparedness has been a major challenge in many seismically active regions. Many property owners are found unwilling to adopt adequate risk mitigation measures in their earthquake-prone buildings, despite the availability of various technical design solutions and the enactment of intervening legislative frameworks necessary to facilitate successful earthquake risk preparedness. This paper examined the rationale behind building owners’ unwillingness to adopt adequate mitigation measures with a view to improve current stakeholders’ practices in earthquake risk mitigation. Using a mixed-method approach, comprising both qualitative and quantitative methods, an examination of the decision-making process and different stakeholders involved in earthquake risk mitigation and the property market, provided insights into the causal agents and stakeholder practices that pose challenges to property owners’ mitigation decisions. Stake-holder practices acting as impediments revealed are property valuation assessment of retrofitted and non-retrofitted EPBs, lack of demand for improved performance in older buildings, high earthquake insurance policy premiums and deductibles, and lack of a risk assessment information system. An in-depth understanding of these challenges highlights the need for a holistic approach that should incorporate market-based incentives necessary for successful earthquake preparedness by building owners, and for designing effective strategies for improving earthquake risk mitigation.
Highlights
Earthquake risk preparedness is essential to reduce losses associated with seismic disasters
Seismic rehabilitation of earthquake-prone buildings (EPBs) by property owners lags behind advances in scientific and engineering understanding, because little attention has focused on understanding and developing strategies to overcome the barriers associated with implementing seismic retrofitting (Hopkins et al 2006)
Semistructured interviews allow the different stakeholders involved in earthquake risk management to describe the complex retrofit decision-making process, and offer insights and explanations regarding the challenges to seismic retrofit implementation
Summary
Earthquake risk preparedness is essential to reduce losses associated with seismic disasters. Previous studies in the social, economic and decision sciences have sought to address property owners’ uptake of mitigation measures from different perspectives such as socio-behavioural, regulatory, economic, cultural, and institutional, but these efforts have not resulted in satisfactory success (Tierney et al 2005; Smith 2009; Egbelakin 2013). Despite this volume of studies, building owners are still found to be reluctant to adopt adequate mitigation measures (Egbelakin et al 2011b). It is possible that the practices and recommendations from other stakeholders involved in the decision-making process could contribute to property owners’ unwillingness to adopt adequate mitigation measures in their EPBs
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