Using action plans to increase voluntary actions that reduce earthquake damage

Technical abstract

Despite the significant risk from earthquakes in New Zealand, many citizens and companies do not prepare for these hazards. Building regulations ensure that new buildings meet the required standards, but most other steps require voluntary action. Most interventions to encourage preparedness focus on information about the hazard, and have limited effectiveness.

In other spheres, using an action plan has been an effective method of increasing preventive actions. Action plans specify a deadline for the action, a person responsible for the action and a location for the action plan.

This project applied action plans to business preparation and tested whether earthquake hazard information accompanied by an action plan led more companies to take two low-cost preparation actions than the same information without a plan. 200 Wellington companies were given a six month time frame to complete two actions: a survival kit action (getting water supplies or alternative) and a damage mitigating action (obtaining and fitting computer restraints).

Half of the companies received the action plan intervention. After six months, 39 or the 96 companies that had replied had obtained water supplies but only three had fitted computer restraints. These was no difference between the action plan group and the information-only group.
The companies gave attributions (reasons) for their actions or non-actions. The follow-up study obtained participants’ ratings of attributions for their failure to complete the target actions of how much they thought about the immediate and long-term consequences of earthquakes for business survival and for life and injury.

For both immediate and long-term consequences, companies reported thinking more about life and adoption of survival actions that mitigation actions. The findings do not show that use of action plans enhances hazard preparedness.