Background

It was very recently we witnessed the sorrowful landslide disaster at Meeriyabedda in Koslanda area. National Building Research Organization (NBRO) is the government institution dealing with landslide hazards according to the disaster management act of Sri Lanka. According to the NBRO land slide hazard warnings had been issued several times prior to the disaster on this area. Apparently, people residing at the location had not vacated the place despite such warnings. As usual heavy arguments went on among many parties with regard to who should take the responsibility of the disaster. Even at the moment of writing this article investigations are being carried out into to the incident.

According to the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) “disaster risk reduction is the concept and practice of reducing disaster risks through systematic efforts to analyze and reduce the casual factors of disasters”. Accordingly reducing exposure to hazards, lessening vulnerability of people and property, wise management of land and the environment, and improving preparedness and early warning for adverse events are some basic actions of disaster risk reduction. Simply speaking disaster reduction is about choices. Each decision and action makes the society either more vulnerable to disasters or more resilient to them. The magnitude of the impact depends on the nature of the choices people make.

Coming back to the Meeriyabedda disaster, in fact, there can be two possibilities for the scenario. One possibility is that the authorities might have not taken necessary steps to shift those people from the disaster prone area and resettle them in a safer place. Second possibility is that people have not vacated the place irrespective of provision of safer lands and other requirements to resettle. Whichever the case might have been the question is why people kept silent neglecting such warning of a hazard which has the potential of making their lives to an end.

It is often mentioned that most people do not care about early warnings, safety precautions etc. The success of disaster risk reduction activities largely depends on the community participation. Risks involve with great deal of uncertainties. Uncertainty is the existence of more than one possibility. As risks do not always bring about disasters, different people will perceive risk differently. At times people heavily object structural mitigation measures like relocation. There can be various reasons for such type of public resistance during risk mitigation efforts. Lack of facilities at new locations, high perceived value of their own properties, problems with regard to livelihood, separation from relatives, political misleading, and ignorance can be some of the reasons. Similarly there can be some psychological affiliations as the root causes of such resistive behavior. They are discussed under social psychology as psychological traps or biases in decision making and same could constrain human responses in disaster risk reduction efforts as well. These psychological factors may affect not only relocation endeavors but actually extend to a broader scope of risk reduction practices. This article is about implications of such psychological traps with disaster risk reduction practices.

Let’s look at some of those psychological traps that can hinder disaster mitigation efforts.

Status-quo

The preference for the current state of affairs is called status-quo bias. An individual weighs the potential losses of switching form the status-quo more heavily than the potential gains. As such, potential risks are under-estimated and people refuse to shift from certain disaster prone areas they have used to live in. Similarly, people are not willing to give up practices that can increase the disaster risk. Unwillingness to adhere to safety precautions in industrial activities, improper land use practices for agriculture and other development activities, environmental pollution especially by wrongful discarding of solid and liquid waste can be given as examples.

Over confidence

Over confidence effect is a bias in which a person’s subjective confidence in his or her judgments is reliably greater than the objective accuracy of those judgments. This may help a person think that he is safe from a hazard. As a result, some people are reluctant to vacate their residencies despite warnings of possible disasters. Some people say that they are safeguarded by their religion as they are behaving virtuously according to their religion. Sometimes workers do not use safety precautions and attribute it to their vocational experience. Driving after consuming alcohol, driving extremely fast, risky overtaking, not wearing seat belts are behaviors caused by overconfidence bias.

Conformity bias

Sometimes when people want to decide what to do they look around and see what others do in this situation and imitate them. This is known as the conformity bias. People frequently conform to the majority view, even when they know it is definitely wrong. This behavior can occur among people during disaster mitigation processes as well. People always do what the majority do. If the majority refrains from leaving a risky area other individuals also follow them despite their realization of risk. On the contrary, people panic unnecessarily during emergencies and create disasters by themselves like injuries or loss of lives due to congestion.

Gambler’s fallacy

The gambler’s fallacy is the bias where someone expects past events to influence the future. For instance consider people living in an area which has got the risk of landslides during rainy seasons. Suppose there were no landslides during few consecutive rainy periods. Then according to the gambler’s fallacy people in that area believe that there will be no more landslides and engage in activities without caring the risk and finally subject to a disaster.

At present human psychological aspects are taken into consideration only during post disaster phases like recovery. When a community-wide disaster hits psychological treatments are done to restore those who have mentally affected by the disaster. In fact, this type of psychological intervention is equally important for disaster risk reduction. Even few educational programs on this subject would benefit the people a lot. The success of the actions taken by authorities to reduce disaster risks will further improve if people are able to make correct decisions devoid of psychological biases.