Effects of Interactions among Social Capital, Income and Learning from Experiences of Natural Disasters: A Case Study from Japan

Abstract

Yamamura E. Effects of interactions among social capital, income and learning from experiences of natural disasters: a case study from Japan, Regional Studies. This paper explores how and the extent to which social capital has an effect on the damage resulting from natural disasters. It also examines whether the experience of a natural disaster affects individual and collective protection against future disasters. There are three major findings. (1) Social capital reduces the damage caused by natural disasters. (2) The risk of a natural disaster makes people more apt to cooperate and, therefore, social capital is more effective to prevent disasters. (3) Income is an important factor for reducing damage, but hardly influences it when the scale of a disaster is small.

Yamamura E. L'effet de l'interaction entre le capital social, le revenu, et l'apprentissage des expériences des désastres naturels: étude de cas du Japon, Regional Studies. Cet article cherche à examiner comment et jusqu'à quel point le capital social a un effet sur les dégâts qui résultent des désastres naturels. On examine aussi si, oui ou non, l'expérience d'un désastre naturel touche la protection individuelle et collective contre les désastres futurs. On en a tiré trois conclusions importantes. (1) Le capital social réduit les dégâts dus aux désastres naturels. (2) La menace d'un désastre naturel rend les gens plus susceptibles de coopérer et, par la suite, le capital social s'avère plus efficace pour empêcher les désastres. (3) Le revenu est important pour la réduction des dégâts, mais n'est guère important au moment où l'échelle du désastre est faible.

Capital social Apprentissage Désastre naturel

Yamamura E. Die Effekte von Wechselwirkungen zwischen Sozialkapital, Einkommen und Lernen aus den Erfahrungen von Naturkatastrophen: Eine Fallstudie aus Japan, Regional Studies. In diesem Beitrag wird analysiert, wie und in welchem Ausmaß sich Sozialkapital auf den Schaden durch Naturkatastrophen auswirkt. Ebenso wird untersucht, ob sich die Erfahrung einer Naturkatastrophe auf den individuellen und kollektiven Schutz vor künftigen Katastrophen auswirkt. Im Wesentlichen gibt es hierbei drei Ergebnisse. (1) Das Sozialkapital verringert den Schaden durch Naturkatastrophen. (2) Das Risiko einer Naturkatastrophe erhöht die Bereitschaft zur Zusammenarbeit, weshalb das Sozialkapital stärker zur Prävention von Katastrophen beitragen kann. (3) Das Einkommen stellt einen wichtigen Faktor zur Verringerung von Schäden dar, hat aber kaum einen Einfluss darauf, wenn der Umfang der Katastrophe gering ausfällt.

Sozialkapital Lernen Naturkatastrophen

Yamamura E. Efectos de las interacciones entre el capital social, los ingresos y las lecciones aprendidas de desastres naturales: estudio del caso de Japón, Regional Studies. En este artículo analizamos cómo y en qué medida tiene el capital social un efecto en los daños causados por desastres naturales. También examinados si la experiencia de un desastre natural afecta a la protección individual y colectiva contra futuros desastres. En general, existen tres resultados principales. (1) El capital social reduce el daño causado por desastres naturales. (2) El riesgo de un desastre natural aumenta la predisposición de las personas a cooperar y, por tanto, el capital social es más eficaz para prevenir desastres. (3) Los ingresos representan un factor importante a la hora de reducir los daños pero apenas influyen cuando la escala de un desastre es pequeña.

Capital social Lecciones Desastre natural

Keywords:

• Social capital
• Learning
• Natural disaster

JEL classifications:

• H41
• P16
• Z13

Acknowledgements

The author benefited from the useful comments by two anonymous referees on an earlier version of the paper.

Notes

In addition, a growing number of reports on Hurricane Katrina (2005) have been published (for example, Congleton, 2006; Shughart, 2006; Sobel and Leeson, 2006; Ewing et al., 2007; Landry et al., 2007; Chappell et al., 2007; Boettke et al., 2007; Whitt and Wilson, 2007; and Eckel et al., 2007).

A natural disaster can be considered as an exogenous shock since it is impossible to predict exactly the date and place of its occurrence. Nevertheless, the extent of damage from a natural disaster would be a function of physical equipment and the prior attitude of residents towards natural disasters.

A number of reports have attempted to investigate social capital in modern society (for example, Knack and Keefer, 1997; Putnam, 2000; O'Brien et al., 2005; Western et al., 2005; Berggren and Jordahl, 2006; Miles and Tully, 2007; and Birch and Whittam, 2008).

Generalized trust profoundly associated with social capital also depends on the features of the social structure (Leigh, 2006a, 2006b; Bjø´rnskov, 2006).

Dynes (2002) pointed out:

• the reason people do not make an effort is because they are unaware of the threat or because they lack good information (knowledge) about the risks. This, increasing awareness and information will result in appropriate mitigative behavior.

  (p. 38)

This paper mainly restricts its attention to the prior attitude towards disaster; that is, preparation for a natural disaster. However, it is also important to investigate how a community recovers from disaster (Bolin and Stanford, 1998; Kaniasty and Norris, 1995).

It should be noted that there is a possibility that experience of natural disasters has a detrimental effect on resilience since those who have successfully weathered an event do not feel they need to evacuate when faced with another such one.

Japan incurred 13% of the total amount of damage resulting from natural disasters worldwide during the past thirty years (Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, 2007).

Yamamura (2008b) indicated that the Hirfindahl-type index used for the ethnic fragmentation of Japan is 0.02. As suggested by Alesina et al. (2003), the value of Japan is smaller not only than that of the United States (0.49), but also the United Kingdom (0.12) characterized by the same island geography as Japan. A historical feature of Japan that illustrates an important difference from the UK should be considered to explain how the homogeneous Japanese character was formed. It is widely understood that between 1641 and 1858, the rulers of Japan during the Edo (Tokugawa) period adopted a closed-door policy (Sugiyama, 1987). The policy of seclusion was initiated as a response to the perceived threat posed by Christian coverts in Japan. Such a policy, aided by Japan's island geography, is thought to have formed the fundamental homogeneous feature of Japanese society, which has persisted even after Japan opened up to world trade and to international exchanges.

In Japan, social capital enhances learning from others such as from the diffusion of home computers (Yamamura, 2008a), makes a contribution to collective action such as responses to the Census (Yamamura, 2008b), and acts as informal deterrents against dangerously driving (Yamamura, 2008c).

Although governments and many businesses have been ill-prepared for the disasters befalling them, it seems that there is a limit to how prepared they can be in the face of an immense disaster, such as the Kobe earthquake.

During the period of recovery from the Kobe earthquake, the city's fire department built a new observation and control centre, and its emergency management process has been reorganized and enlarged (Horwich, 2000).

After the Kobe earthquake, the creation of informal support systems against disasters was considered important (Shaw and Goda, 2004). Recently, a social network service (SNS) was tested by the Japanese government with the aim of improving community building and disaster management (Schellong, 2007).

Putnam (2000) points out that social capital has not only a positive effect, but also a detrimental one upon human behaviour. Durlauf (1999) asserts that social capital facilitates intra-group coordination by enhancing group identity, which, in turn, may promote inter-group hostility. Pelling (1998) found in a case study of Guyana that marginalized groups continued to be excluded from local participatory decision-making in environmental management.

It also seemed reasonable that people could learn about disaster-reduction measures from websites. If this were the case, knowledge is not likely to increase social capital. Hence, any link between previous knowledge and social capital calls for careful attention.

It is also likely that social capital will make a community more resilient; that is, the community is more likely to recover quickly from a disaster. When Hurricane Katrina occurred, the Catholic Church in New Orleans helped organize crews of returning residents to assist one another repairing homes (Boettke et al., 2007).

It should be noted that, besides the effects of social capital, the experience of a disaster would have effects on the damage from another natural disaster through various channels. For instance, the disaster experience might lead to better infrastructure and better state policies, both of which are related to learning, but not necessary to social capital.

Victims are defined here as injured persons who need medical care.

It should be noted that whether or not an earthquake is a disaster generally depends on the extent to which daily life was disrupted and the damage. The ‘empirical’ definition in this paper is different.

The number of intense hurricanes and earthquakes can be obtained from National Astronomical Observatory Japan (2006). Similar results were provided when these data are used.

Toya and Skidmore (2007) explored not only fatalities, but also the index of economic damage measured by the estimated damage in real US dollars when disasters occurred.

Values of coefficients can be interpreted as the elasticity of the number of victims with respect to the corresponding independent variables, which are evaluated at the sample mean values of the variables.

The Cabinet Office, Government of Japan (2007) reports that the past experience of disasters encourages people to take precautions against future disasters, whereas the effect of experience on cautious behaviour diminishes as time passes. Therefore, this paper restricts past experiences to those within three years.

The existing literature mainly concerns Western countries; variables such as newspaper reading, volunteer activity, and voter turnout are considered to capture social capital. They also seem appropriate as surrogate social capital in Japan (Yamamura, 2009); however, these variables are not available for every year. Therefore, they cannot be incorporated in this paper since the data set used herein is a panel structure that requires annual data.

It should be noted that users of bathhouses are not likely to be evenly distributed across social classes.

Another possible reason for their unpredictability can be found in the argument of Lederman et al. (2002), that the indicators of social capital they defined reflect both group-specific and society-wide social capital, which are expected to promote and reduce collective action, respectively. Therefore, these opposite effects neutralize each other.

While the estimation results shown in Table 3 are based on the zero-inflated negative binomial model designed to take into account the effect of outliers, it seems reasonable to question whether the outliers matter since the sample is skewed as mentioned previously.

The collective action required here is different from that required for informal voluntary activity promoted by social capital.

Various factors, such as policy-making and investment for physical equipment, which are not considered in this research, are, however, thought to have made a contribution to the results. Thus, care is needed in interpreting these results and the findings observed in this study will require future scrutiny.