Household Seismic Adjustments: The Influence of Inconvenience and Efficacy Perceptions

Abstract

Social psychological theory and empirical evidence suggest that peoples’ perceptions of household seismic adjustments, in addition to their perceptions of earthquakes themselves, should predict the likelihood that seismic adjustments are performed.  However, little research has been done to address this issue.  While past research has found peoples’ perceptions of the effectiveness of household adjustment to influence adjustment levels, peoples’ perceptions of inconvenience of household seismic adjustments namely the cost, time, effort, required cooperation and required knowledge involved in making these adjustments have been found to not influence seismic adjustment.  However, this study did find that the higher the perceived inconvenience of an adjustment, the less likely people are to perform that adjustment.  Findings suggest that hazard managers should stress the relative ease and convenience of seismic adjustments when talking about mitigation generally while emphasizing both efficacy and convenience when speaking about individual adjustments. These findings are applicable to other disasters.  Natural hazard agency officials, managers, and app designers should seek to reduce cost, time, effort, required knowledge, and required cooperation dimensions of household adjustments for all natural hazards.