The impact of subjective well-being on risk perception and disaster preparedness actions: A survey of the Kinki region, Japan, through structural equation modelling

Well-being is an emerging and seemingly influential factor in disaster risk management. For example, after a large-scale disaster, some victims suffer from severe anxiety and stress, while other studies have reported a decline in subjective well-being (SWB). Since only a few studies have addressed the SWB under the preparedness phase, the present study aims to investigate and provide empirical evidence about the role of SWB under the context of disaster risk management, including risk perception (RP) and adopting actual protective actions (PB). To examine these relationships, a conceptual model was built based on a review of the literature. This study investigated the relationships between SWB, RP, and PB as well as other factors including trust in government and past disaster experience (EX) in the Kinki region, Japan. Our model was analysed by employing structural equation modelling. The results show that SWB, EX and RP have positive effects on PB, with similar degrees across variables. These results are supported by previous studies. Moreover, disaster-related factors like EX and RP are not statistically influential on SWB, contrary to the hypotheses. Therefore, the present study implies that SWB or well-being might play a crucial role in the process of ensuring that citizens are adequately prepared against hazards, even without experiencing them before. However, since SWB is a composite of many other elements, constituent factors like education and economic prosperity can have a similar effect but they were omitted in this study. Thus, further research is needed to explore such variables.