Exploring the change of Risk Perception and Adaptation Behavior among Varied Social Character Before and After Earthquake Disaster – A Case Study in Taiwan

Abstract. Resilience has rapidly arisen in multiple disciplines and has been regarded as the key in disaster mitigation and adaptation. Objective indicator framework is a common way evaluating resilience while limited attention on measuring subjective resilience. In fact, subjective resilience might further explain how people respond to the uncertainty of disaster risks. Due to the limitation on predicting potential earthquake events, past studies put more efforts on discussing pre-disaster. Luckily, this paper could explore the change of risk perception and adaptation behavior in types of socio-economic groups through a comparative analysis between pre- and post- earthquake disaster, and one-way analysis of variance with Post Hoc test is applied to examining the change of risk perception and adaptation behavior. The results show that female might be much willing on house retrofit due to the fear and the worrisome. However, the elders might be less aware on earthquake than the young. Education indeed affects people’s risk perception and adaptive behavior. As a whole, the results could be referred to areas clustered of male, female, elder population, and lower education population by providing risk communication, risk education, and diverse disaster adaptation options. Although limitation exists, the results of comparative analysis between pre-disaster and post-disaster conditions could be referred to adequate strategies and decide the priority of risk management policies by governments.