The Noah's Ark effect: Radicalization of social meanings of disaster preparedness in communities facing a major disaster

Abstract

This study proposed and demonstrated the “Noah's Ark” effect, a concept wherein major disaster scenarios generate radical engagement in disaster preparedness within local communities as opposed to the “cry wolf” effect. The study setting was the town of Kuroshio in Kochi Prefecture, Japan, where a large tsunami was expected to hit, according to the Cabinet Office's New Estimation in March 2012. The study quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed Japanese newspaper articles on “disaster prevention” in Kuroshio through text mining and performed a comparison between the tsunami disaster caused by the Tohoku Earthquake and the expected tsunami devastation in other areas. The results revealed that the Noah's Ark effect is characterized by five features: (1) increasing disaster preparedness issues to the same level as those in tsunami-affected areas; (2) focusing on preventing a disaster or hazard (disaster as an event) rather than preparing for issues brought about by a disaster (disaster as a process); (3) involving gradual shifts rather than sudden changes observed in the affected areas (4) resident voluntary action (e.g., evacuation training); rather than dependence on government measures; and (5) promoting and simplifying specific issues. In regard to the negative impact of disaster forecast and estimation, the findings suggest the need to consider not only the cry-wolf effect, which applies to high-frequency but small-scale disasters (e.g., floods), but also the Noah's Ark effect, which applies to low-frequency but large-scale disasters (e.g., tsunamis).