Support for Disaster Risk Reduction Policy in the Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian

• In Event: Disaster Politics and Policies in the Americas: New Research

Abstract

How does “experiencing” a disaster affect people’s attitudes towards disaster risk and disaster risk reduction (DRR)? If there are changes in public opinion vis-à-vis DRR policies, are these permanent or, instead, more like temporary spikes? And what might explain any differences in how people’s views are affected by such extreme events? This paper looks at whether and how “focusing events,” like disasters, cause event-driven shifts in public awareness and opinion. There is some research to date suggesting that disasters increase awareness / perceptions of risk and increase public demand for risk mitigation policies. However, there are few studies of change over time focused on the duration of these shifts, and fewer still that analyze individual-level effects on such attitudinal changes. This paper utilizes a unique data set based on two waves of national telephone surveys (n=1000) conducted in the Bahamas in the months after Hurricane Dorian hit in early Sept. 2019, as well as survey data from the 2014 AmericasBarometer. It first shows that Bahamians’ support for DRR policies does appear to have increased in the aftermath of the storm and then subsequently declined. This paper then goes beyond aggregate-level analysis and uses regression-style modeling to test three sets of hypotheses about changes in individuals’ support for DRR policies and practices, assessing the effects of: 1) perceptions about a) the effectiveness and b) the integrity (or, alternately, corruption) of DRR policy enforcement, both in the respondent’s community and throughout the Bahamas; 2) how seriously a person/family was affected by the hurricane; and 3) perceptions of future disaster risk.

Author

• Barry S. Levitt, Florida International University