The role of trust in influencing natural hazard resilience

Resilience plays a critical role in reducing risk and preventing disasters by enabling communities to withstand and recover from the impacts of hazards. While resilience is at the heart of disaster risk reduction literature, there is a lack of consistency in defining the factors that influence it. The ‘risk perception paradox’ presents the phenomenon where individuals may recognise that a hazard poses a significant threat, yet do not take action to protect themselves; ‘trust’ is one factor that has been used in efforts to better explain people’s actions. The research regarding trust and resilience has been conducted in many countries, through the lens of different hazards, explores different types of trust, considers different 'trusting' institutions, and importantly arrives at varying conclusions reflecting the complex interaction between trust, resilience, and culture.

While there is a growing body of research studying trust and resilience, these studies have predominantly focussed on flood hazards, trust in governments, and preparedness as the only metric by which to measure resilience; these studies are also centred in North America, Asia, and Europe. There is a need for trust and resilience research to be conducted in the context of small island developing states (SIDS) and from a multi-hazard perspective; in this context, multi-hazard refers to both the susceptibility of multiple hazards an area faces, and the cascading/ triggering/ interconnected relationships between various hazards. Our research aims to understand the importance of trust in informing disaster resilience on the island of Dominica in the Caribbean.

To generate a framework through which to understand the general trends of the relationship between trust and resilience, we have conducted a systematic literature review of relevant articles from January 2000 to February 2024. Through the Scopus and Web of Science databases, 67 relevant articles from 24 countries were selected. These studies provide a global perspective on the role of trust in natural hazard resilience through diverse methodologies and covering a range of hazard types. The review finds that resilience has multiple definitions and can generally be categorised into personal preparedness, risk perception, willingness to evacuate, and community support. Our findings show that trust in different institutions can be associated with both increases and decreases in resilience, and that limited studies are looking at the role of trust in mitigation infrastructure, media, emergency services, scientists, and personal beliefs.

In Dominica, we have conducted fieldwork to understand who people place trust in for disaster management and how these patterns of trust differ for different hazards. We conducted a mixed-methods study comprised of interviews (n = 101) and a quantitative survey (n = 539 – ~1% of the national population).  In this research, we present how our trust/ resilience framework can be applied to highlight regional patterns in the trust-resilience dynamic. This framework can be applied to other SIDS as a tool to identify patterns between trust and disaster resilience.