Enhancing resilience in ageing: The role of age-friendly community and individual health in reducing seismic risk

Abstract

Age-friendly cities/communities (AFC) propose promising strategies for incorporating disaster resilience-building with urban planning and design interventions. However, little attention has been paid to exploring the effects of AFC concept on the resilience and health of older people from a behavioural perspective and through empirical-based approaches. This article aims to expand on the attributes of AFC by incorporating social capital, community support, and individual health factors. We further explore their roles in enhancing earthquake resilience among older adults. We develop a novel interdisciplinary analytical framework, called the Framework of Age-friendly and Resilience Behaviour for Seismic Risk Reduction (FARBSR). This framework combined with focus group meetings and cluster, regression, and factor analyses to compare the determinants of pre-disaster preparedness, coping responses, post-disaster recovery behaviour and resilience among older adults. Based on an empirical survey conducted in Taipei, Taiwan, we randomly selected 427 older adults for face-to-face questionnaire interviews. Results show that high-quality age-friendly physical environments significantly increase older adults’ adoption of adaptation behaviour and resilience. Social environments, social capital, and community support play a relatively weak but critical supporting role. Resilience and adaptation to earthquakes also result from interactions between individuals and their environment. However, the effect of individual health and cognitive factors on this dynamic is mixed. Our research opens avenues for fresh perspectives, bridging the AFC framework with the health and cognitive attributes of older adults, and highlighting implications for policy in land use planning and built environment design.