Lei Sun

This study aims to extend the application of behavioral public policy and general rumor theory by using a survey‐experimental method to examine the impact of four strategies—rumor refutation, knowledge provision, legal deterrence, and source regulation—on public's earthquake rumor trust and rumor‐sharing behavior. The results indicate that these strategies can significantly reduce public's trust in rumors and the likelihood of sharing them, albeit with varying degrees of effectiveness and through different underlying mechanisms. Specifically, the rumor refutation strategy primarily influences rumor sharing intention through the mediation of rumor trust, whereas legal deterrence and source regulation strategies appear to exert a more direct effect on rumor sharing intention. These insights highlight the importance of adopting diversified and integrated governance strategies, enhance the management of communication regulatory channels and legal frameworks, and improve the accuracy and effectiveness of rumor governance with full‐cycle rumor governance.

Raising people’s disaster awareness is a prerequisite for enhancing their disaster-coping capacities. Although “disaster awareness” has long been a very common term in academic circles, disaster management communities, and even society at large, there still remains a notable lack of sufficient discussion regarding what this awareness of the general public specifically refers to, and how it can be concretely measured across different types of hazards and disasters, varied population groups, and diverse physical and socio-economic contexts. This gap is particularly acute in China. First, after reviewing the existing international understanding of the term of Public Disaster Awareness (PDA), this study newly defined this concept by drawing upon concepts of environmental awareness and environmental literacy in the field of environmental studies. Next, based on this new PDA definition, UNISDR’s terminology on public awareness of disaster, the authors’ extensive relevant research experience, and other valuable factors, this study proposed an education objective-oriented dimensional construct for PDA concept by fully incorporating UNESCO-UNEP’s classic understanding of the categories of environmental education objectives. Specifically, the proposed PDA dimensional construct comprises five specific dimensions: 1) disaster sensitivity and risk perception, 2) acquisition of disaster knowledge, 3) mastery of disaster-coping measures and skills, 4) attitudes and values, and 5) participation in disaster reduction. Subsequently, utilizing this novel PDA dimensional construct, the study developed several sets of disaster awareness measurement questionnaires that focus on people’s earthquake disasters awareness (EDA) to target different public groups in China: primary and high school students, their teachers, students’ parents, and the general public. Using these questionnaires and stratified sampling processes, the current EDA state and associated disaster education issues across several regions in China were surveyed over the past few years. Data analysis of high school students in Weinan, Shaanxi province revealed the following key findings. (i) Students’ overall EDA level was largely acceptable, but their performance in disaster sensitivity and local risk perception aspects was apparently unsatisfactory. (ii) Girls performed better than boys in attitudes, values, and participation, while boys were better in the knowledge dimension. (iii) As grade levels increased, students’ attitude and values, and participation became increasingly passive and indifferent. (iv) Extracurricular activities contributed much more to students’ EDA development than curricular education. (v) The EDA-building effects of different extracurricular activities varied; specifically, the overall effects of several activities were more significant than others, and each activity had its own distinct impact patterns across the five disaster awareness dimensions. Finally, based on these findings, education objective-specific policy recommendations for improving disaster education in local primary and high schools were provided. The novel construction of the PDA concept holds significant theoretical value for exploring both disaster awareness and disaster education. Furthermore, the central logic and specific strategies (e.g., approaches for PDA indicator development) that derived from measuring the seismic disaster awareness of China’s population have promising transferable practical implications for addressing similar issues regarding both other types of disasters and the disasters in other countries.

Despite the numerous studies focused on the sociopsychological factors involved in seismic preparedness, we have limited knowledge of the impact pathways from fatalism belief and optimism orientation to preparedness. This study proposed a theoretical model to examine the intertwined relationships among fatalism belief, optimism orientation, and risk perception regarding public seismic preparedness based on a survey in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region in China. The results indicate that fatalism belief can directly reduce an individual's seismic preparedness intention. In addition, such beliefs negatively moderate the positive relationship between the probability perception of earthquakes and skill preparedness. Moreover, optimism orientation has dual effects. On the one hand, it directly enhances the public's intention to prepare. On the other hand, it makes people underestimate their perceptions of the consequences of earthquakes, which indirectly reduces their willingness to materially prepare. Furthermore, we found that fatalism belief can negatively moderate the positive relationship between optimism orientation and material preparedness. These findings contribute to safety education for earthquake disaster risk reduction (EDRR) strategies, especially those used where fatalist culture is prevalent.

There are thousands of earthquakes every year, but most of them are small and are not disasters. This study explored whether non‐destructive earthquake experience affects public risk perception and motivates preparedness. The study respondents were from the Jiaodong Peninsula, China, where more than 20 small earthquakes have occurred during the past decade. The results show that non‐destructive earthquake experience positively affected public perception of the probability of an earthquake but not the perception of consequences. The relationship between non‐destructive earthquake experience and preparedness intention was not statistically significant. In addition, this study revealed that the perception of consequences was a positive predictor of earthquake preparedness intention, that is people with higher levels of perceived consequences of an earthquake were more likely to be motivated to prepare. However, non‐destructive earthquake experience moderated this relationship, that is weakened the strength of this relationship between perceived consequences and skill preparedness intention. These findings permit the identification of potential pathways to increase levels of disaster preparedness and potential barriers to enhancing disaster resilience in regions experiencing small hazards.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to determine whether it is useful to tease apart the intimately related propositions of social production and social construction to guide thinking in the multidisciplinary study of disasters.Design/methodology/approach: The authors address our question by reviewing literature on disasters in the social sciences to disambiguate the concepts of social production and social construction.Findings: The authors have found that entertaining the distinction between social production and social construct can inform both thinking and action on disasters by facilitating critical exercises in reframing that facilitate dialog across difference. The authors present a series of arguments on the social production and construction of disaster and advocate putting these constructs in dialog with vulnerability frameworks of the social production of disasters.Originality/value: This commentary contributes to disambiguating important theoretical and practical concepts in disaster studies. The reframing approach can inform both research and more inclusive disaster management and risk reduction efforts.