Doctoral Dissertation Research in DRMS: What Motivates Apartment Owners to Invest in Structural Mitigation for Earthquakes? The Relative Roles of Risk Perceptions, Social Influence

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

This research documents the beliefs and behavior of apartment building owners in Berkeley, California regarding the potential earthquake vulnerabilities of their properties. In doing so, the researcher capitalizes on observed variation in responses to a 2005 local ordinance that imposed new requirements on owners of a particularly hazardous and socially-important building type known as "soft-story" construction. Approximately 60 semi-structured interviews of Berkeley soft-story owners, including some owners that retrofit their buildings prior to the law and thus were exempt from it, will be conducted. Subjects will also complete a written questionnaire containing demographic, personality, and risk perception items. These qualitative and psychometric data will be combined with administrative information from compliance records, engineering reports, and building permit applications to comprehensively explore how this population frames their decisions about seismic safety and to assess commonalities and distinctions among multi-unit residential property owners who have implemented different degrees of structural mitigation. A second objective of the study is to look for indications of the mechanisms through which the recent law may have influenced owner thoughts, intentions, and behaviors about mitigation. The goal is to illuminate how social influences interact with individual differences in the formation and change of risk perceptions and risk adjustment behaviors in the target population and, specifically, to test the hypothesis that personality, social perceptions, past experiences, and demographic traits will correlate more with mitigation intentions and behavior than either risk perceptions or project cost-effectiveness. The broader impact of the research is its contribution to the development of targeted, more effective risk communication approaches, policy designs, or incentives for motivating earthquake preparedness behaviors among similarly situated building owners.