Boolean trust in levels of government: the case of household emergency preparedness

Abstract

Unexpected and often severe weather has taxed community capacities. Convincing households to prepare by developing emergency plans, keeping necessary supplies, and investing in home upgrades, to name a few, has been a focus of many public campaigns related to extreme weather. Essentially, these programmes are exercises in persuasion. What, then, characterises such a campaign that is likely to be successful in this act of persuasion? Recent work has found that household preparedness may be related to trust in government, as a key emergency information provider, although the evidence is mixed. In this article, we argue that the mixed evidence scholars have found may come from the measurement of trust in government. Our statistical analysis shows that increases in minimum trust in levels of government decreases household preparedness for tornadoes. The finding highlights the importance of augmenting and restoring social trust (in addition to trust in government) to produce better emergency management outcomes in the United States.