Social vulnerability determinants of individual social capital for emergency preparedness

Abstract

The study uses data from the 2008 General Social Survey to construct a goal-specific individual social capital for emergency preparedness (ISCEP) scale. It draws on social vulnerability theory to propose determinants of ISCEP and ordinary least squares (OLS) to estimate the coefficients of the regressions. The study findings contribute to extant scholarship about the role of investing in human capital on social capital outcomes. It also supports the idea that communication among groups nourishes individual social capital and that policymakers should invest in policy narratives that shape perceptions of residents for emergency-related social capital that they would like to promote. Overall, the study makes three novel contributions to the scholarship. First, social capital should be goal-specific and measured at the individual level as ISCEP to understand its formation. Second, ISCEP should be studied as an outcome variable and not only as a causal variable, and lastly, social vulnerability provides a theoretical framework for investigating determinants of ISCEP.