Drivers of disaster planning among African-American households

The paper seeks to explore the drivers of disaster planning in African-American households. While the paper is exploratory, the authors attempt to dialogue with substantial theoretical and applied research around vulnerability and disaster. Race, ethnicity and vulnerability are issues deeply entangled with American disaster preparedness and response. In this study, the authors hope to illuminate the threads which bind them together and contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between race, ethnicity, class and preparedness.

Data for this project come from a disaster planning question placed on the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS). The authors analyze a split sample of around 5,000 African-American households descriptively and with multinomial logistic regression.

Disaster planning among African-American households is a product of past experiences, concern about other hazards, social trust and gender identity. These results are similar to other findings within the study of household preparedness and help to advance the understanding of predictors within the African-American community. Key drivers such as income, education level, gender identity, social trust and perceptions of other risks are consistent with previous studies.

This project is the first to examine issues of disaster planning utilizing a national sample of African-American households via the one-of-a-kind 2020 CMPS.