Immediate Behavioral Response to Earthquakes in New Zealand and Japan

Following the 2011 Christchurch and Hitachi (Tōhoku) earthquakes, the study team selected a random sample of 600 households in each city from census (Christchurch) or voter registration (Hitachi) records. The procedure yielded 257 usable questionnaires from Christchurch (response rate = 42.8%) and 332 usable questionnaires from Hitachi (response rate = 55.3%). A major contribution of this study is to assess the effects of people’s immediate emotional reactions on their behavioral responses. Although people’s emotional reactions are likely to have a significant effect on their behavior, this class of variables has been almost completely ignored in previous research on earthquake response and has been studied inadequately even in the few cases when it has been addressed.