Deciding to Apply for Federal Disaster Assistance: A Preliminary Investigation of Disaster Decision-Making using a Bounded Rationality Framework

Rivera Jason D. ()
Additional contact information
Rivera Jason D.: SUNY Buffalo State, Department of Political Science (Public Administration Division), 1300 Elmwood Ave., Buffalo, NY 14222, USA

Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, 2019, vol. 16, issue 3, 19

Abstract: Among disaster victims, the decision to apply for assistance with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is not straight forward. It is typically affected a variety of factors beyond individual demographic characteristics. Using Texas in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, this study utilizes bounded rationality as a theoretical framework for exploring what may affect the decision to apply for individual assistance with FEMA. A representative sample of generally affected individuals and a subsample of individuals with home damage are used to investigate various factors thought to be important in decision-making and compare differences between the groups. As a byproduct of the analysis, it is observed that although the loss of employment and being able to rely on one’s immediate network is a significant predictor of applying for aid among individuals with home damage, these variables are not significant among those that were generally affected. Recommendations for future research are provided to enhance our understanding of decision-making in the aftermath of disasters.

Keywords: applying for disaster assistance; bounded rationality; disaster recovery; disaster resilience; Hurricane Harvey; individual decision-making (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsem-2018-0039 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:johsem:v:16:y:2019:i:3:p:19:n:4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/jhsem/html

DOI: 10.1515/jhsem-2018-0039

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management is currently edited by Irmak Renda-Tanali

More articles in Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().