Who Participates in Building Disaster Resilient Communities: A Cluster-Analytic Approach.

CONTEXT The Los Angeles County Community Disaster Resilience project is a community-based program to improve disaster resilience. We collected baseline measures of resilience-related attitudes and practices among targeted communities prior to the implementation of the intervention. OBJECTIVES This study identified community disaster resilience behavior patterns and assessed their associations with sociodemographic and social cognitive characteristics. DESIGN Telephone surveys during summer 2013. SETTING Sixteen communities in Los Angeles County (2 per service planning area). PARTICIPANTS The address-based sample of adults (≥18) was selected to be representative of 2010 census tracts in each of the communitiesMAIN OUTCOME MEASURES:: We examined relationships between sociodemographic characteristics, social cognitive factors, and participation in community disaster resilience activities. RESULTS Three clusters of community resilience behavior patterns emerged. Cluster distribution significantly differed across several sociodemographic and social cognitive factors. Participants who were African American, Hispanic, had higher education, income, self-efficacy, trust in the public health department, civic engagement, and social capital were significantly associated with being in the cluster most active in resilience-building activities. CONCLUSIONS The results confirm that there are distinct community resilience behavior patterns. These patterns vary according to population characteristics, which supports audience segmentation approaches and developing a range of emergency preparedness programs targeted to the strengths and weaknesses of the different audience segments.