Department of Crisis Management, University of Žilina, 010 26 Žilina, Slovakia.
International University of Logistics and Transport, 51-168 Wroclaw, Poland.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Feb 26;18(5):2311. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18052311.
The current increase and severity of the natural disasters whose effects on the public health are likely to be even more extreme and complex, requires enhancing and developing the disaster preparedness on the population level. In order to be able to do so, it is inevitable and determinative to know the factors that affect people's preparedness on the population level. Therefore, the objective of this article is to present the results from assessing the factors related to the population preparedness for the disasters on a sample of citizens living from the Slovak Republic. Our research is based on the exploration of the questionnaire survey' results aimed at investigating the preparedness and preventive proactive behaviour of the population against the disasters. The search for the initiators of such a behaviour and assessment of the influence of various aspects (e.g., the respondents' experience with disasters, their vulnerability to disasters, the risk awareness, the perception of the disaster risks in the changing environment, etc.) on the respondents' behaviour against disasters is the main part of the article and is supported by the statistical analysis. The results of the survey suggest that the disaster risk awareness and overall disaster preparedness level is rather poor and the population is inactive. The proactive behaviour of the respondents against the disasters is partially affected by some of their personality and socio-economic characteristics, especially the younger respondents currently incline more to adopting the protective measures. In addition, other aspects, e.g., the negative experience with the disasters in the past influence the preparedness. However, the impacts must have been relatively serious for the proactive behaviour to be influenced. The influences of other aspects as well as the possible methods for improving the disaster preparedness and the possibilities of increasing the resilience of the population as a whole are also discussed in this article.
当前，自然灾害的发生频率和严重程度都有所增加，其对公众健康的影响可能更加极端和复杂，因此需要在人口层面增强和发展备灾能力。为了做到这一点，了解影响人口备灾能力的因素是必不可少且具有决定性的。因此，本文的目的是展示评估人口对灾害备灾能力的相关因素的结果，该结果基于对居住在斯洛伐克共和国的公民样本进行的问卷调查。我们的研究基于对问卷调查结果的探索，旨在调查人口对灾害的备灾和预防主动行为。寻找这种行为的发起者，并评估各种方面（例如，受访者的灾害经历、对灾害的脆弱性、风险意识、对不断变化的环境中的灾害风险的感知等）对受访者灾害行为的影响是本文的主要部分，并通过统计分析得到支持。调查结果表明，灾害风险意识和整体灾害备灾水平相当低，人口的行为并不积极。受访者对灾害的主动行为部分受到其个性和社会经济特征的影响，尤其是年轻的受访者目前更倾向于采取保护措施。此外，过去的灾害负面经历等其他方面也会影响备灾。然而，只有当影响足够严重时，备灾行为才会受到影响。本文还讨论了其他方面的影响以及可能提高灾害备灾能力和提高整个人口弹性的方法。
