Collective efficacy and natural hazards: differing roles of social cohesion and task-specific efficacy in shaping risk and coping beliefs

Abstract

Previous research in non-disaster contexts has shown that the concept of collective efficacy, which is a group’s sense of its ability to achieve a specific objective, assists understanding of community readiness and households’ decisions to take preparedness actions. Collective efficacy expands the concept of social capital, which refers to social resources such as trust, norms and networks, by addressing how likely communities are to activate these resources for specific tasks. This paper empirically investigates the effect of three distinct collective efficacy components on risk perception, fear and self-efficacy regarding natural hazards in Austria. The three components have differing impacts on risk and coping beliefs: (1) Social cohesion decreases risk perception and fear but has no effect on self-efficacy; (2) Efficacy belief in social support increases self-efficacy; (3) Efficacy belief in citizen groups increases risk perception and fear. The combination of efficacy belief in social support and citizen groups seems to be most promising for stimulating protective action, as they together promote both risk and coping appraisal. However, overreliance on social support may have the undesirable effect of creating a false sense of safety among disaster-prone households. The findings demonstrate that collective efficacy provides a meaningful perspective from which to examine risk and coping beliefs but caution against treating it as an umbrella concept, given the differing effects of its components. Future studies are needed to investigate the impact of collective efficacy on other key explanatory factors of protective action, such as response efficacy or non-protective responses.     

Insights into the reception and acceptance of risk messages: nuclear emergency communication

The objective of this paper is to test whether the effect of variables such as knowledge, attitudes, trust, risk perception, and psychometric risk characteristics changes in the different stages of risk-related information processing. To address this question, a distinction is made between two information-processing steps, reception (measured as a person’s ability to retain the information communicated) and acceptance (measured as a person’s level of agreement with the communicated information). An empirical study was conducted, using a radiological accident (2008) in Belgium as a communication case study. Face-to-face interviews were conducted on a large sample of Belgian population representative with respect to province, region, level of urbanization, gender, age, and professionally active status (N?=?1031) and among the population living in vicinity of the accident (N?=?104). All factors were measured on reliable scales (Cronbach’s α?>?.75). The reception–acceptance model was used to produce new insights into risk communication. The results demonstrate that knowledge was the driving factor only for the reception of risk messages, while heuristic predictors such as psychometric risk characteristics, attitudes, and trust were most influential for the acceptance of risk messages. It is discussed how the results will facilitate a more thorough understanding of information processing and how they could be used to design more focused risk communication strategies.     

The siting of a research centre on clean coal combustion and CO2 capture in Spain: Some notes on the relationship between trust and lack of public information

This paper aims to gain a better understanding of the role played by trust in the context of scarcity of public information, vis‐à‐vis the installation of a Centre for Investigation in Advanced Technologies (Centro de Investigación de Tecnologías Avanzadas, CITA) to be located in a coal‐rich region of Spain. Data from semi‐structured interviews (n = 15), a questionnaire survey (n = 400) and focus group sessions (2) are drawn together to reveal how the local community perceives the proposed CITA scheme, and how this relates to the level of trust placed in the project promoters. Results illustrate how a lay community gives meaning to an unknown technological project, trying to place it within its appropriate economic, social and political context, and relating it to prior knowledge and experiences. Results also show that, in contrast to certain risk communication theories, the public is able to place trust in a technological activity and their promoters despite a general lack of knowledge on either.     

Social Capital,Trust, and Corporate Performance: How CSR Helped Companies During the Financial Crisis (and Why It Can Keep Helping Them)

The authors summarize the findings of their study, published recently in the Journal of Finance, that shows that CSR investments can help companies when they perhaps need it most—that is, during sharp downturns when overall trust in companies and markets declines. Companies with high‐CSR rankings experienced stock returns that were five to seven percentage points higher than their low‐CSR counterparts during the 2008–2009 financial crisis, and even larger excess returns during the Enron crisis of 2001–2003. High‐CSR companies during the crisis also reported better operating performance, higher growth, higher employee productivity, and greater access to debt markets—while continuing to generate higher shareholder returns as late as the end of 2013. Many of these operating improvements continued well into the post‐crisis period, though at more modest levels. As the authors view their findings, the ‘social capital’ built up by corporate CSR programs complements effective financial capital management in increasing shareholder wealth mainly by limiting companies' downside risk. CSR is seen as not only reducing systematic as well as firm‐specific risk, but as also providing protection against overall ‘loss of trust.’ The social capital created by CSR programs is said to provide a kind of insurance policy that pays off when investors and the overall economy face a severe crisis of confidence.     

Social capital and access to informal finance – evidence from Chinese private firms

This study investigates how firms’ social capital affects their access to informal finance. We argue that social capital helps reduce information asymmetry, increase trust between related parties and enforce lending contracts, so it has positive effects on firms’ access to informal finance. Using novel survey data of Chinese private firms, we find that firms with more social capital have more access to informal finance with lower costs. Further tests show that the effect of social capital is more significant when firms are located in regions with less developed market and lower community’s social capital and during the 2008 financial crisis.     

Risk communication and worried publics in an imminent rockslide and tsunami situation

In this paper determinants of adequate worry were studied in the case of an impending rockslide and tsunami in the fjords around Åknes on the west coast of Norway. Approximately 3000 people live in this danger zone. A rockslide may cause up to 54 million cubic metres (1.9 billion cubic feet) of rock to slide into the fjord below, causing a major tsunami. In relation to risk communication, the study sought insights into the determinants of adequate worry in this certain, but time-indeterminate, natural disaster. A questionnaire designed to measure the public’s ‘otte’, a parochial Norwegian expression translated as a nagging worry about the rockslide, was mailed to all 875 inhabitants aged 18?years and older in the four small communities along the fjord; 382 responded (43.6%). The results indicated that members of the public who had trust in the experts and engaged in dialogue with them tended to worry more than others. Those who reported concerns about issues unrelated to the disaster tended to worry less about a possible rockslide. Analyses also revealed that those who lived in a community with extraordinary assets worried the most. Compliance with the evacuation procedures and trust in the experts were positively correlated with the level of worry. In order to address the needs of the public, this study suggests that not only are facts and figures about risk important but also issues that address the worries of the public. Implications for risk communication are discussed.     

The determinants of integrating policy-based and community-based adaptation into coastal hazard risk management: a resilience approach

Abstract

A growing number of studies focus on improving the understanding of how the households’ adaptations can be encouraged in the process of coastal hazards and risk management. Particularly, this process is undergoing a major paradigm shift as it moves from an approach dominated by policy-based adaptation to another one in which community-based resilience building is favored. Thus, this article aims to apply a resilience approach to improve the knowledge about how public measures influence private autonomous adaptation behavior, through a transdisciplinary investigation of household adaptation behavior and its determinants. The Resilience Framework of Household Autonomous Adaptation to Climate- and Weather-Related Hazard Risks (ROHACHR) is proposed and combined with a focus group meeting and multivariate analysis to compare pre-disaster, during a disaster, post-disaster adaptations, and resilience behavior of households. Using an empirical survey of the households in three coastal municipalities in Taiwan, we examine the relationships between public measures and private adaptations that provides three distinguishing types of household behavior: ‘core’, ‘trust in governmental aid’, and ‘awareness and structures’. Results show that providing hazard risk information may be one step toward encouraging private autonomous adaptations. Several factors that help foster resilience also appear to be influential in households’ adaptation decisions, such as specific and positive governmental aid, information trust, and social capital. Based on these results, it shows that the ROHACHR is useful to characterize households’ adaptation and resilience behavior and explain how they respond to public measures. Finally, the policy implications of our findings for improving resilience of coastal communities and encouraging public-private collaboration in the process of hazard risk management are discussed.     

Involving community members in preparedness and resiliency involves bi-directional and iterative communication and actions: a case study of vulnerable populations in New Jersey following superstorm Sandy

Abstract

Recent increases in hurricanes and other weather events have brought to light the importance of understanding what people think should be done to improve recovery and resiliency in their communities. While most studies focus only on perceptions of concerns, effects, medical issues and personal preparedness, herein subjects in New Jersey were interviewed to determine future actions they intend to follow, the actions they think agencies or others should be taking, and present a conceptual model for involvement of vulnerable community members in their own protection for future catastrophic events. The emphasis was on government and community actions. It is a bottom-up approach rather than a top-down approach to reduction of future risk. The case study involved subjects interviewed immediately following Sandy (general affected public; N?=?756) and 2–3?years after Sandy (vulnerable population, N?=?586). Concerns of subjects within 100?days related to friends family, safety and survival, food and water and medical concerns as well as recovery, repairs on their property, and community safety. Two to three years later, subjects remembered being significantly more concerned about family, friends, safety and survival, food and water and medical concerns than subjects interviewed within 100?days. Memories (or concern) also faded with respect to future preparedness; significantly more subjects interviewed 2–3?years after Sandy were going to do nothing, were less concerned about protecting family, community, and possessions than subjects interviewed within 100?days of Sandy. In contrast, the same percentage were going to evacuate and buy supplies, so it is not just a matter of forgetting the whole event. The data from open-ended questions indicated that subjects believed that recovery and preparation for a future severe storm event involved complicated and iterative activities of many different individuals, organizations, and governmental agencies. Thus we present an iterative, interactive model, and provide examples of how subjects viewed the interactions necessary to provide resiliency to their communities. We discuss the value-added of a bottoms-up approach to understanding risk reduction, preparedness and resiliency.     

Informal household preparedness: methodological approaches to everyday practices

Abstract

Despite increasing attention to individuals’ everyday lives in the literature on risk, few studies investigate household preparedness within the everyday life context. Preparedness is most often regarded as a predefined set of capacities for dealing with emergencies. This article presents methodological approaches for studying what I suggest calling informal preparedness activities that are performed as part of daily life in households. Starting with the assumption that everyday life is enacted through culturally and socially shared practices, it is argued that preparedness is interwoven into these practices. Contrary to studying preparedness as the degree to which households are aware of and act according to a formal definition of preparedness, informal household preparedness focuses on preparedness as embedded in the routinised practices that make up everyday life. The study of informal household preparedness is based on three methodological approaches that explore these practices: (i) Performance of everyday practices, where interviews that focus on performance ask questions about what practitioners actually do; (ii) materiality, where walk-alongs are used to connect performance interviews to the material surroundings; and (iii) visualisation, where the material aspects of informal preparedness are documented. These approaches were carried out in a study of Norwegian households’ management of and preparedness for electricity and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure breakdowns. Addressing informal and formal preparedness activities expands our understanding of household preparedness and should help policy makers recognise the active role of households and their actual resources and constraints in future preparedness planning.     

Exploring Comparative Ratings and Constituent Facets of Public Trust in Risk Regulatory Bodies and Related Stakeholder Groups

This paper reports on two comparative ranking tasks performed by a sample of the British citizens (N = 304). The first was designed to compare levels of relative trust vested in a sample of UK risk regulatory bodies and associated stakeholder groups. The second sought to elicit a ranking of a range of previously identified facets of social trust referenced to their desirability as attributes of a government funded risk regulatory body. The ranking tasks were embedded within a broader programme of research focused on “Evaluating public understandings of and trust in the Health and Safety Executive” (Pidgeon et al., 2003). It is argued that deriving rankings of multi‐faceted phenomena using the method of paired comparisons offers a more robust approach to rating social trust entities than the direct ranking techniques used in previous studies in this area. Results are discussed with reference to qualitative findings from the broader programme of work on public trust in HSE (Pidgeon et al., 2003) and the wider literature on public trust in risk regulation.     

Transitions in environmental risk in a transitional economy: management capability and community trust in Russia

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union 10 years ago, the Russian Federation has undergone a radical social, political and economic transformation. This paper's focus is particularly on the consequences of this transformation for the natural environment. This is done by utilizing Beck's (Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage, 1992) concept of Risk Society to explore the interrelationships between managers, firms and communities in terms of transitions in capabilities, knowledge, trust, and even the very notion of community vis‐à‐vis pollution control and environmental protection. A qualitative study of managers in Russian manufacturing enterprises, environmental regulators and local communities, was undertaken in two provincial Oblasts in the Russian Federation, identifying a number of factors characteristic of Beck's (1992) treatise including ‘risk culture’, ‘organized irresponsibility’, ‘individualization’ and ‘subpolitics’. In so doing a deeper understanding is developed of the impact of economic transition on the environment, indicating a different risk society trajectory to that predicted for the West. The implications for continued, in‐depth research in focusing on economies in transition are also discussed.     

Social capital and capital allocation efficiency

Based on the social norms and structural theories of social capital, this study examines the relationship between community social capital and the firms’ capital allocation efficiency. We hypothesize and find that the community social capital of a firm's headquarter area has a negative and statistically significant impact on its capital allocation inefficiency, which is robust to alternative proxies for community social capital and capital allocation inefficiency, propensity score matching and instrumental variable regressions. In addition, we find that the effect of community social capital is more pronounced for firms with poor internal ethical culture and weak network connections to outside executives and directors, implying that community social capital becomes important in these situations. This finding links prior social norms and networks literature to capital allocation studies in that the norms and networks components of community social capital discipline self-interested managers’ behavior and reduce information asymmetry-two channels of capital allocation efficiency. Overall, community social capital works as a compensatory monitoring and information transfer mechanism and improves the firms’ capital allocation efficiency.     

Societal trust and corporate tax avoidance

Using an international sample of firms from 25 countries and a country-level index for societal trust, we document that societal trust is negatively associated with tax avoidance, even after controlling for other institutional determinants, such as home country legal institutions and tax system characteristics. We explore the effects of two country-level institutional characteristics—strength of legal institutions and capital market pressure—on the relation between societal trust and tax avoidance. We find that the relation between trust and tax avoidance is less pronounced when the legal institutions in a country are stronger and is more pronounced when the capital market pressure is stronger. Finally, we examine the relation between societal trust and tax evasion, an extreme and illegal form of tax avoidance. We show that societal trust is negatively related to tax evasion and the negative relation is less pronounced when legal institutions are stronger.     

Social Trust,Rule of Law,and Economic Exchange: Evidence from China and Its Major Trading Partners

ABSTRACT

Using cross-country panel data and employing the instrumental variable generalized method of moments (GMM) method, this article examines the effect of social trust on economic exchange between China and its major trading partners over the period 2005–2013. Social trust significantly increases bilateral trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) between China and its partners, and this effect is much stronger in nonmember countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) than OECD member countries. Further exploration suggests that the heterogeneity could be explained by the substitution relationship between social trust and the rule of law: social trust matters more in countries where the rule of law is weaker. We also .find that the impact of trust on trade and FDI is weaker in countries that have greater language similarity to China, are adjacent to China, or are common-law-origin countries. Based on these results, in implementing the Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese government and companies should not only focus on each country’s legal norms but also attach importance to the role of social capital in international economic exchange.     

Getting management accounting off the ground: post-colonial neoliberalism in healthcare budgets

Taking Modell's [(2014) The societal relevance of management accounting: an introduction to the special issue. Accounting and Business Research, 44 (2), 83–103] ‘societal relevance of management accounting’ agenda forward, and based on a cost accounting initiative in a Sri Lankan hospital, this paper examines how management accounting is implicated in societal relevance. It reports on a post-colonial neoliberal state's use of cost-saving experiments and the resultant emancipation of the individuals involved. It conducts a bottom-up analysis, from micro events in the hospital to policymaking at the level of the Provincial Council. This analysis suggests that cost accounting acts as a mediating instrument: it begins to loosen the old Keynesian post-colonial bureaucratic budget confinements, creates a social space for individuals to consider cost-saving experiments, and addresses wider policy concerns about hospital resource management. The story is illuminated by Gilles Deleuze's and Zigmund Bauman's ideas on post-panoptic societies: old confinements are being problematised and new flexible, ‘liquid’ spaces created, in which individuals are emancipated in terms of their ability to influence resource management within and beyond the organisational constituency.     

Societal trust and firm-level trust: Substitute or complement? An international evidence

Using an international sample of 30,060 observations of firms from 32 countries, covering the period from 2004 to 2018, combined with a country-level index for societal trust, this study provides evidence that societal trust is negatively associated with corporate social responsibility (CSR), which in turn is a proxy for firm-level corporate trust-building investment. Further analyses show that firms in low-trust countries tend to invest more in CSR when they are owned by large foreign shareholders originating from low-trust countries. The negative impact of societal trust on CSR is pronounced for firms located in less stable countries. Overall, the results suggest that societal trust acts as a substitute to firm-level trust. From the perspective of risk management, the results confirm this study's argument that the marginal benefits of CSR-as-insurance are more crucial for firms located in low-trust countries.     

The influence of chronic and temporary accessibility on trust and policy support

Abstract

Food is very closely related to our everyday life and consumers are intolerable to food risk. The impact of media report on food risk perception has been addressed but more elaborated approach on consumers’ cognitive process of food risk perception via media is needed. Theoretically guided by accessibility theory, we examined the relationship between consumers’ perception of food risk (i.e. food schema), media use, media frame, trust, and policy support. Furthermore, anger was employed as a mediating variable influencing on trust and policy support. Results found that the level of media use had a significant positive effect on trust and policy support. Among the media frames, the government responsibility frame and corporate responsibility frame were shown to be negative predictors for trust and policy support. As for the food schema, checking schema was the most influential negative factor on trust and policy support. Anger was found to exert a negative effect on trust and policy support but this effect decreased if the level of trust was high. In terms of the relationship between media frames and the food schema on anger, most food schema reduced the strong positive effects of the media frame on anger. This means peoples’ anger induced by media frames can be diminished by individuals’ specific food schema. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Mobilizing grassroots’ technological innovations and traditional knowledge, values and institutions: articulating social and ethical capital

The Honey Bee Network has helped provide a sort of loose platform to converge creative, but uncoordinated individuals across not only Indian states having varying cultural, linguistic and social ethos, but also in 75 other countries around the world. What the Network is trying to do in a rather quiet manner may transform the way the resources—in which poor people are rich—are used in the future. These resources are their knowledge, innovations and sustainable practices.I first argue that the classical concept of social capital does not distinguish between the trust in society created for social good versus social ‘bad’. For instance, the trust among members of the mafia and other socially undesirable networks does not constitute social capital. I am also trying to emphasize that part of social trust which is guided by higher ethical values which may not have become social norms as yet. This is being characterized as ethical capital. Finally, I conclude that the Honey Bee Network has tried to articulate the social and the ethical capital of society at the grassroots to demonstrate how local individuals and communities are trying to solve local problems without any outside help.     

Communicating with the public during health crises: experts' experiences and opinions

Governments and health agencies worldwide are planning for a potential influenza pandemic. Their plans acknowledge the importance of public communication during an outbreak and include related guidelines and strategies. Emerging infectious disease (EID) communication is a new addition to the literature, drawing on health promotion communication, crisis communication and environmental/technological risk communication. This paper adds to the literature, exploring the notion of ‘effective communication during health crises' by reporting on interviews with 22 public health officials, scientists and communications professionals responsible for communicating with the public. When analyzed in the context of the risk communication literature, the interviews reveal several considerations for health risk communicators. First, given the important role that mass media will play in an EID outbreak, there is an urgent need for public health to build partnerships with journalists based on an understanding of the two parties' unique societal roles. Second, seemingly practical communications considerations – such as how certain to be about information before sharing it and whether to engage in two‐way communication with the public – have ethical dimensions that deserve attention. Third, there are unique challenges associated with communicating uncertainty, which would benefit from an exploration of the role of trust in health crisis communication.     

The future of accessibility in disaster conditions: How wireless technologies will transform the life cycle of emergency management

By describing a transformed life cycle of emergency management, this paper re-envisions how emergency managers may prepare for, respond to, recover from, and mitigate against disaster impacts in the future. Additionally, this paper also reveals how the broader social, political, economic, and cultural levels must change to foment a culture of safety with and for people with disabilities. The authors use the framework to identify how future wireless technologies can empower people with disabilities with regards to individual (or household) emergency preparedness and in coping with the drastic life changes following a disaster.