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Seismic Adjustments: The Influence of Inconvenience and Efficacy Perceptions, State of Residence, and Demographic Factors

Theoretical and empirical evidence suggests that peoples' perceptions of household seismic adjustments, in addition to their perceptions of earthquakes themselves, should predict the likelihood that seismic adjustments are performed. However, little research has been done to address this issue. While recent research has found peoples' perceptions of the effectiveness of household adjustments to influence adjustment levels, people's perceptions of inconvenience of household seismic adjustments - namely the cost, time effort, required cooperation and required knowledge involved in making these adjustments - have been found to not influence seismic adjustment. However, this study did find that the higher the perceived inconveniences of an adjustment, the less likely people are to perform those adjustments. As a second area of investigation, a survey was given to subjects in an understudied risk population (residents living along the Wasatch Fault Line that runs through the state of Utah) to compare Utahns to Washingtonians and Californians. The survey revealed that although California residents have the highest risk perceptions and the most previous earthquake experience, they rank lower than Washington and Utah residents in terms of how much they think, talk, and gather information about earthquakes. Implications of both areas of research are discussed.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:BGMYU2/oai:scholarsarchive.byu.edu:etd-6610
Date01 December 2000
CreatorsAnderson, Nicole Elise
PublisherBYU ScholarsArchive
Source SetsBrigham Young University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceTheses and Dissertations
Rightshttp://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

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