Journal of the Japan Society of Erosion Control Engineering, Vol.63,No.4,2010

Perspective of psychological process for evacuation behavior in storm and flood damage

Takeru KINOSHITA, Yasuo AOYAGI, Takashi ITOU, Ryouzi HIRAKAWA,Motoki ITOU, Tutomu ANIYA and Akira YAMAMOTO


Abstract

In reaction to storm and flood damages which threaten inhabitants' life and their properties, local governments give out evacuation calls and directives, and most of the inhabitants start evacuation by these information. However, the awareness for evacuation of the inhabitants is very poor, and the rate of the evacuation is low at present even if self\motivated evacuation is needed. The evacuation behaviors of the inhabitants upon an outbreak of a disaster are strongly influenced by psychological factors, such as, gnormalcy bias". Therefore, to clarify the mentality and action process of the inhabitants for evacuation and draw up the formulation of evacuation action plan which considers well the psychological action of the inhabitants are required at the same time.Therefore, this study extracted psychological factors such as the attitude and responsibilitiness which concerning evacuation and assumed process of evacuation. This study classified these processes in four psychological levels, 1) information transfer, 2) awareness of importance, 3) awareness of needs, 4) intendment by combining some psychological factors.
For verifying the appropriateness of our hypothesis, we conducted a questionnaire survey about landslide. And also tried to attempt the classification of the disincentives which ruled out the process of evacuation behavior in accordance with assumed evacuation behavior process and surveyed its validity and effectiveness in flood damages, such as sediment disaster and flooding.
As a result of questionnaire survey, it is cleared that there is a tendency of the inhabitants' psychological levels for their evacuation behavior process as we assumed. And we classified disincentives of inhabitants' evacuation behavior process, and suggested the applicability and the validity of applying psychological levels for the evacuation action plans.

Key wordsFpsychology of disaster, evacuation behavior, behavior process, psychological factors, landslides, Nakagusuku village in Okinawa prefecture


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