The psychological factors that constrain human responses in disaster risk reduction

Wednesday, 31 December 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

By Eng. Thushara Dissanayake – Chartered Engineer It was very recently we witnessed the sorrowful landslide disaster at Meeriyabedda in Koslanda area. The National Building Research Organization (NBRO) is the government institution dealing with landslide hazards according to the disaster management act of Sri Lanka. According to the NBRO landslide hazard warnings had been issued several times prior to the disaster in this area. Apparently, people residing at the location had not vacated the place despite such warnings. As usual heavy arguments went on among many parties with regard to who should take the responsibility for the disaster. Even at the moment of writing this article, the incident is still being investigated.

According to the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) “disaster risk reduction is the concept and practice of reducing disaster risks through systematic efforts to analyze and reduce the casual factors of disasters”. Accordingly, reducing exposure to hazards, lessening vulnerability of people and property, wise management of land and the environment, and improving preparedness and early warning for adverse events are some basic actions of disaster risk reduction. Simply speaking, disaster reduction is about choices. Each decision and action makes the society either more vulnerable to disasters or more resilient to them. The magnitude of the impact depends on the nature of the choices people make. Coming back to the Meeriyabedda disaster, in fact, there can be two possibilities for the scenario. One possibility is that the authorities might have not taken necessary steps to shift those people from the disaster prone area and resettle them in a safer place. The second possibility is that people have not vacated the place irrespective of provision of safer lands and other requirements to resettle. Either case might have been the question as to why people kept silently neglecting the warnings for a hazard that had the potential to end lives. It is often mentioned that most people do not care about early warnings and safety precautions. The success of disaster risk reduction activities largely depends on community participation. Risks involve several uncertainties. Uncertainty is the existence of more than one possible outcome. As certain risks do not always bring about disasters, different people will perceive certain risks differently. At times people heavily object to structural mitigation measures like relocation. There can be various reasons for such type of public resistance during risk mitigation efforts. The lack of facilities at new locations, the high perceived value of their own properties, problems with regard to livelihood, separation from relatives, political misleading, and ignorance can be some of the reasons. Similarly, there can be some psychological affiliations as the root causes of such resistive behavior. They are discussed under social psychology as psychological traps or biases in decision making and the same could constrain human responses in disaster risk reduction efforts as well. These psychological factors may affect not only relocation endeavors but actually extend to a broader scope of risk reduction practices. This article is about the implications of such psychological traps with disaster risk reduction practices. Let’s look at some of those psychological traps that can hinder disaster mitigation efforts. Status-quo The preference for the current state of affairs is called the status-quo bias. An individual weighs the potential losses of switching from the status-quo more heavily than the potential gains. As such, the potential risks are under-estimated and people refuse to shift from certain disaster prone areas they are used to living in. Similarly, people are not willing to give up practices that can increase the disaster risk. The unwillingness to adhere to safety precautions in industrial activities, improper land use practices for agriculture and other development activities, environmental pollution especially by wrongful discarding of solid and liquid waste can be used as examples. Over confidence The overconfidence effect is a bias in which a person’s subjective confidence in his or her judgments is reliably greater than the objective accuracy of those judgments. This may help a person think that he is safe from a hazard. As a result, some people are reluctant to vacate their residencies despite warnings of possible disasters. Some people say that they are safeguarded by their religion as they are behaving virtuously according to their religion. Sometimes workers do not use safety precautions and attribute it to their vocational experience. Driving after consuming alcohol, driving extremely fast, risky overtaking, and not wearing seat belts are behaviors caused by the overconfidence bias. Conformity bias Sometimes when people want to decide what to do they look around and see what others do in the situation and imitate them. This is known as the conformity bias. People frequently conform to the majority view, even when they know it is definitely wrong. This behavior can occur among people during disaster mitigation processes as well. People always do what the majority do. If the majority refrains from leaving a risky area other individuals will also follow them despite their realization of risk. On the contrary, people panic unnecessarily during emergencies and create disasters by themselves like injuries or loss of lives due to congestion. Gambler’s fallacy The gambler’s fallacy is the bias where someone expects past events to influence the future. For instance, consider people living in an area that has the risk of landslides during rainy seasons. Suppose that there were no landslides during a few consecutive rainy periods. Then, according to the gambler’s fallacy, people in that area would believe that there will be no more landslides and engage in activities without caring about the risk and finally become subjected to a disaster. At present, human psychological aspects are taken into consideration only during post disaster phases like recovery. When a community-wide disaster hits, psychological treatments are done to restore those who have been mentally affected by the disaster. In fact, this type of psychological intervention is equally important for disaster risk reduction. Even a few educational programs on this subject would benefit the people a lot. The success of the actions taken by authorities to reduce disaster risks will further improve if people are able to make correct decisions devoid of psychological biases.