Diffusion of Disaster-Preparedness Information by Hearing from Early Adopters to Late Adopters in Coastal Bangladesh
Subhajyoti Samaddar,
Sudip Roy,
Fatima Akter and
Hirokazu Tatano
Additional contact information
Subhajyoti Samaddar: Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Kyoto 611-0011, Japan
Sudip Roy: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee 247667, India
Fatima Akter: Department of Meteorology, University of Dhaka, Dhaka 1000, Bangladesh
Hirokazu Tatano: Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Kyoto 611-0011, Japan
Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 7, 1-19
Abstract:
The successful social implementation of a rainwater-harvesting tank can save millions of people in coastal Bangladesh from drinking saline water and health risks. However, previous studies have shown that several potentially effective, innovative disaster-preventive technologies failed to disseminate even after proactive promotional campaigns. People at risk worry about adopting innovative preventive measures because of the uncertainties attached to the new technology, such as its merits, cost, maintenance, durability, social acceptance, etc. Instead of mass media, people rely on social networks to obtain trusted, verified, and personal information. Hearing plays an important role, through which information diffuses from pioneer adopters to late adopters or potential adopters across settlements, starting from the village to district to region. Unlike conventional studies, limited to understanding the regional dimension of diffusion, this study investigated how the information diffuses from pioneer adopters to potential adopters at both the macro-level (e.g., districts, subdistricts, and towns) and micro-level (e.g., villages and neighborhoods). This study was based on field surveys through interviewing 196 innovative rainwater-tank adopters from 30 villages and communities in two subdistricts in coastal Bangladesh. We found that the macro-level pioneer adopters played a critical role in diffusing awareness knowledge, through which people in new villages, neighborhoods, and sub-districts, where mass media and change agents failed to reach, became aware of the existence of the innovative measure. However, macro-adapters alone failed to disseminate the innovation further, as the local communities intend to pay to heed the suggestions and experiences of the local (micro) pioneer adopters to understand the principle and how-to knowledge of the innovation. Information is diffused in the villages and neighborhoods through local pioneer adopters through direct, intimate personal contacts.
Keywords: information diffusion; disaster preparedness; social networks; salinity; Bangladesh (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/7/3897/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/7/3897/ (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:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:7:p:3897-:d:779688
Access Statistics for this article
Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu
More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().