Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
SpringerLink
Log in

Demographic Factors in the Disaster-Related Information Seeking Behaviour

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Diversity, Divergence, Dialogue (iConference 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12646))

Included in the following conference series:

  • 1467 Accesses

Abstract

Although demographics are important factors in the investigation of disaster studies, existing work on disaster-related information seeking behaviour (ISB) does not offer quantitative insight into the relationship between them. This paper investigates the demographic factors such as age, gender, location, and occupation, and their relationship with information needs, information sources, and information channels. Content analysis was performed on the testimony of 262 people who experienced the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011. The results suggest that a large effect was observed between (1) age and active information needs and (2) gender and information sources. Our findings can be useful for designing policies and programmes at risk of major disaster events as they offer multiple ideas about how to optimise disaster-coping plans for diverse communities.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Alexander, D., Magni, M.: Mortality in the l’Aquila (central Italy) earthquake of 6 April 2009. PLoS Currents 5 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Coe, R.: It’s the effect size, stupid: What effect size is and why it is important (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Enarson, E., Fothergill, A., Peek, L.: Gender and disaster: foundations and new directions for research and practice. In: Rodríguez, H., Donner, W., Trainor, J.E. (eds.) Handbook of Disaster Research. HSSR, pp. 205–223. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63254-4_11

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  4. Erikson, E.H.: Childhood and Society, WW Norton & Company. Inc., New York (1950)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Erikson, E.H.: Identity: Youth and crisis (No. 7). WW Norton & Company, New York (1968)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Esnard, A.M., Sapat, A.: Population/community displacement. In: Rodríguez, H., Donner, W., Trainor, J. (eds.) Handbook of Disaster Research. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research, pp. 431–446. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63254-4_21

  7. Field, A.: Discovering Statistics Using SPSS (3. baskı). Sage Publications, London (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Frankenberg, E., Laurito, M., Thomas, D.: The demography of disasters. Prepared for the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences. 2nd edn. (Area), 3, 12 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Gill, D.A., Ritchie, L.A.: Contributions of technological and natech disaster research to the social science disaster paradigm. In: Rodríguez, H., Donner, W., Trainor, J.E. (eds.) Handbook of Disaster Research. HSSR, pp. 39–60. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63254-4_3

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  10. Hsieh, H.F., Shannon, S.E.: Three approaches to qualitative content analysis. Qual. Health Res. 15(9), 1277–1288 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Hyndman, J.: Feminism, conflict and disasters in post-tsunami Sri Lanka. Gend. Technol. Dev. 12(1), 101–121 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. International Labour Office: International Standard Classification of Occupations 2008 (ISCO 2008): Structure, group definitions and correspondence tables. International Labour Office (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Kelley, K., Preacher, K.J.: On effect size. Psychol. Methods 17(2), 137 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Kouadio, I.K., Aljunid, S., Kamigaki, T., Hammad, K., Oshitani, H.: Infectious diseases following natural disasters: prevention and control measures. Expert Rev. Anti Infect. Ther. 10(1), 95–104 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Lachlan, K., Spence, P., Nelson, L.: Age, gender and information seeking. National Communication Association, San Diego (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Lindell, M.K.: Communicating imminent risk. In: Rodríguez, H., Donner, W., Trainor, J.E. (eds.) Handbook of Disaster Research. HSSR, pp. 449–477. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63254-4_22

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  17. MacCrimmon, K.R., Wehrung, D.A.: A portfolio of risk measures. Theor. Decis. 19(1), 1–29 (1985)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Monahan, B., Ettinger, M.: News media and disasters: navigating old challenges and new opportunities in the digital age. In: Rodríguez, H., Donner, W., Trainor, J.E. (eds.) Handbook of Disaster Research. HSSR, pp. 479–495. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63254-4_23

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  19. Muto, K., Yamamoto, I., Nagasu, M., Tanaka, M., Wada, K.: Japanese citizens’ behavioral changes and preparedness against COVID-19: an online survey during the early phase of the pandemic. PLoS ONE 15(6), e0234292 (2020)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Najafi, M., Ardalan, A., Akbarisari, A., Noorbala, A.A., Jabbari, H.: Demographic determinants of disaster preparedness behaviours amongst Tehran inhabitants, Iran. PLoS Currents 7 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Perry, R.W., Lindell, M.K.: Aged citizens in the warning phase of disasters. Int. J. Aging Hum. Dev. 44(4), 257–267 (1997)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Quarantelli, E.L., Boin, A., Lagadec, P.: Studying future disasters and crises: a heuristic approach. In: Rodríguez, H., Donner, W., Trainor, J.E. (eds.) Handbook of Disaster Research. HSSR, pp. 61–83. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63254-4_4

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  23. Rahmi, R.: The use of sight, hearing, and touch on information seeking behaviour of the great east Japan earthquake. J. Inf. Media Stud. 18(Issue 1), 13–27 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Rahmi, R., Joho, H., Shirai, T.: An analysis of natural disaster-related information-seeking behaviour using temporal stages. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. 70(7), 715–728 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Ray, J.W., Shadish, W.R.: How interchangeable are different estimators of effect size? J. Consult. Clin. Psychol. 64(6), 1316 (1996)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Roszkowski, M.J., Snelbecker, G.E., Leimberg, S.R.: Risk tolerance and risk aversion. Tools Tech. Financial Plann. 4(1), 213–225 (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Ryan, B.: Information seeking in a flood. Disaster Prev. Manage. Int. J. (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Sadiq, M.N., Ishaq, H.M.: The effect of demographic factors on the behaviour of investors during the choice of investments: evidence from twin cities of Pakistan. Global J. Manage. Bus. Res. (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Schultz, J., Elliott, J.R.: Natural disasters and local demographic change in the United States. Popul. Environ. 34(3), 293–312 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Shiga, S., Joho, H., Blanco, R., Trippas, J.R., Sanderson, M.: Modelling information needs in collaborative search conversations. In: Proceedings of the 40th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, pp. 715–724, August 2017

    Google Scholar 

  31. Smith, S.K., McCarty, C.: Demographic effects of natural disasters: a case study of Hurricane Andrew. Demography 33(2), 265–275 (1996)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Sonnenwald, D.H.: Evolving perspectives of human information behaviour: contexts, situations, social networks and information horizons. In: Exploring the Contexts of Information Behaviour: Proceedings of the Second International Conference in Information Needs. Taylor Graham (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  33. Spence, P.R., Westerman, D., Skalski, P.D., Seeger, M., Sellnow, T.L., Ulmer, R.R.: Gender and age effects on information seeking after 9/11. Commun. Res. Rep. 23(3), 217–223 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Stough, L.M., Mayhorn, C.B.: Population segments with disabilities. Int. J. Mass Emerg. Disasters 31(3), 384–402 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  35. Thomas, D.S.: The role of geographic information science & technology in disaster management. In: Rodríguez, H., Donner, W., Trainor, J. (eds.) Handbook of Disaster Research. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research, pp. 311–330. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63254-4_16

  36. Watson, J.T., Gayer, M., Connolly, M.A.: Epidemics after natural disasters. Emerg. Infect. Dis. 13(1), 1–5 (2007). https://doi.org/10.3201/eid1301.060779

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Wei-Haas, M.: What happens when natural disasters strike during a pandemic? 17 April 2020. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/what-happens-when-natural-disasters-strike-during-coronavirus-pandemic/. Accessed 05 May 2020

  38. Xie, B., et al.: Global health crises are also information crises: a call to action. J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. (2020)

    Google Scholar 

  39. Yuen, M.C., King, I., Leung, K.S.: A survey of crowdsourcing systems. In: 2011 IEEE Third International Conference on Privacy, Security, Risk and Trust and 2011 IEEE Third International Conference on Social Computing, pp. 766–773. IEEE, October 2011

    Google Scholar 

  40. Bolin, B., Kurtz, L.C.: Race, class, ethnicity, and disaster vulnerability. In: Rodríguez, H., Donner, W., Trainor, J.E. (eds.) Handbook of Disaster Research. HSSR, pp. 181–203. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63254-4_10

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  41. Barnewall MacGruder, M.: Examining the psychological traits of passive and active investors. J. Financial Plann. (1988)

    Google Scholar 

  42. McKenzie, P.J.: A model of information practices in accounts of everyday‐life information seeking. J. Doc. (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  43. Wilson, T.D.: Human information behavior. Inf. Sci. 3(2), 49–56 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  44. Imran, M., Castillo, C., Lucas, J., Meier, P., Rogstadius, J.: Coordinating human and machine intelligence to classify microblog communications in crises. In: ISCRAM, May 2014

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the 2016 iFellows Doctoral Fellowship, the Indonesia Endowment Fund for Education (LPDP), and PUTI Q1 contract NKB-1450/UN2.RST/HKP.05.00/2020. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions described here are the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect those of the sponsors.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Library and Information Science, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia

    Rahmi Rahmi

  2. Faculty of Library, Information and Media Science, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan

    Hideo Joho

Authors
  1. Rahmi Rahmi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Hideo Joho
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rahmi Rahmi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Katharina Toeppe

  2. Renmin University of China, Beijing, China

    Hui Yan

  3. The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

    Samuel Kai Wah Chu

Appendices

Appendix A

Disaster-related information seeking behaviour instances by gender, age, and location.

figure a

Appendix B

Disaster-related information seeking behaviour instances by occupation.

figure b

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Rahmi, R., Joho, H. (2021). Demographic Factors in the Disaster-Related Information Seeking Behaviour. In: Toeppe, K., Yan, H., Chu, S.K.W. (eds) Diversity, Divergence, Dialogue. iConference 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12646. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71305-8_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71305-8_4

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-71304-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-71305-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation