College Students and Environmental Disasters: A Review of the Literature

Kyle Breen (), Mauricio Montes, Haorui Wu and Betty S. Lai
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Kyle Breen: School of Social Work, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS B3H 4R2, Canada
Mauricio Montes: Department of Counseling, Developmental, & Educational Psychology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA
Haorui Wu: School of Social Work, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS B3H 4R2, Canada
Betty S. Lai: Department of Counseling, Developmental, & Educational Psychology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA

Social Sciences, 2023, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-19

Abstract: College students are a unique population occupying a distinct life-course and transition period between adolescence and adulthood. Although not monolithic in experiences, knowledge, and demographics, this diverse population is particularly susceptible to immediate, short-term, mid-term, and long-term disaster impacts. Recently, disaster research focusing on college students has rightly focused on the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Although the pandemic was a public health disaster interrupting social, developmental, and educational processes for students on a global scale, the climate crisis and related environmental disasters continuously threaten college students’ individual development, health, and well-being. Thus, it is critical to understand current knowledge focusing on environmental disasters and college students in order to determine future research needs. This article used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach to examine research on college students and disasters over the past ten years (2014–2023). We identified 67 articles, which we analyzed through a mixed methods approach, including descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. Results indicate that disaster impacts on college students are an understudied topic in the social sciences, especially in an era of more-frequent and -intense environmental hazards. Our findings demonstrate a need to engage college students in disaster research worldwide so that trade schools, colleges, and universities can collaborate with policymakers to build this unique and disproportionately impacted population’s capacity to mitigate against, respond to, and recover from environmental hazards in an ever-changing climate.

Keywords: disasters; college students; disaster impacts; disaster education; mitigation; well-being; literature review (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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