“The Community Helped Me:” Community Cohesion and Environmental Concerns in Personal Assessments of Post-Disaster Recovery

Abstract

This study investigates long-term appraisals of community recovery after a major environmental disaster. Specifically, we conducted a survey of 351 individuals living in coastal counties in Alabama and Florida on the five-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Using mixed methods that combined content analysis and ordinary least squares regression, we find that residents who believe they live in a community where neighbors help each other are more likely to see their communities as recovering. Conversely, reporting major effects from environmental problems, like lost fishing income, reduces perceptions of community recovery. Five years after the oil spill a majority of respondents saw little economic recovery and almost half perceived low environmental recovery. This reflects the importance of the environment to the long-term health and success of areas dependent on natural resources. It also suggests the need for directing funding toward community-level programs and preserving shared natural resources post-disaster.

Keywords:

• BP oil spill
• community
• disasters
• environment
• recovery
• social ties

Notes

Notes

1 Ineligibilities included being under 18, being mentally/physically unable to take the survey, being an organization or business, or not speaking English. Also, cell phone numbers are an imperfect indicator of where people reside and anyone who did not live in the targeted zip codes were excluded.

2 Response rate calculated using guidelines provided by the American Association of Public Opinion Research.

3 Given the conceptual similarities across community assistance and helping behaviors, we tested for multicollinearity in our models and did not find it to be a problem (mean variance inflation factors were less than 1.5).

4 Model fit evaluated using Wald tests. Income improved fit for only one model, community economic recovery.

5 Percentages from total sample minus any missing data for the question.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences [U19ES020683] as part of the Deepwater Horizon Research Consortium.