The Factors Affecting Volunteers’ Willingness to Participate in Disaster Preparedness

Yingnan Ma, Wei Zhu, Huan Zhang, Pengxia Zhao, Yafei Wang and Qiujie Zhang
Additional contact information
Yingnan Ma: Beijing Research Center of Urban Systems Engineering, Beijing 100035, China
Wei Zhu: Beijing Research Center of Urban Systems Engineering, Beijing 100035, China
Huan Zhang: School of Social Development and Public Policy, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Pengxia Zhao: Beijing Research Center of Urban Systems Engineering, Beijing 100035, China
Yafei Wang: Beijing Research Center of Urban Systems Engineering, Beijing 100035, China
Qiujie Zhang: School of Social Development and Public Policy, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 8, 1-10

Abstract: Disaster preparedness is crucial for providing an effective response to, and reducing the possible impacts of, disasters. Although volunteers’ participation plays an important role in disaster preparedness, their actual participation in disaster preparedness activities is still low. To find ways to encourage more volunteers to participate, this study analyzed the social background and organizational and attitudinal factors affecting the volunteers’ willingness to participate. Questionnaires were distributed to 990 registered disaster volunteers across Beijing and the data were analyzed using linear regression models. Results revealed a weak willingness to participate in disaster preparedness. Only 28.08% of the respondents indicated that they were “very ready” to participate in voluntary disaster preparedness, and 14.65% showed “a little bit” of interest. The following was concluded: (1) Disaster volunteers’ social background variables were related to their willingness to participate in disaster preparedness. Compared to male volunteers, female volunteers were more willing to participate. Chinese Communist Party members were more willing to participate than non-members. (2) Providing accidental life insurance for the volunteers had a positive effect on their willingness to participate in disaster preparedness. Provision of more training had a negative effect on the volunteers’ willingness to participate, indicating a low quality of training. (3) Organizational identification was positively related to the volunteers’ willingness to participate. According to these results, we suggest that volunteer organizations should improve their standards and procedures for disaster volunteer recruitment and selection, and gain a deeper understanding of the needs of the disaster volunteers in order to better motivate them to participate.

Keywords: volunteering; disaster preparedness; accidental life insurance; training; organizational identification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/8/4141/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/8/4141/ (text/html)

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:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:8:p:4141-:d:535997

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().