Hurricanes disrupt community vitality when significant damage and destruction occurs to the built environment, particularly in remote, tourism-dependent coastal communities. Immediately following the impacts to homes, businesses, and infrastructure, tourism business owners and employees begin to make recovery decisions that affect the resilience of coastal communities. This Rapid Response Research (RAPID) project examines the factors and information networks that influence recovery decisions in Ocracoke and Hatteras, North Carolina, which were substantially impacted by Hurricane Dorian (September 2019). The remote nature of these communities makes them particularly vulnerable, as their transportation network is built upon a single state highway and/or ferry service that, when damaged, can affect access to recovery resources. Their dependence on tourism also makes them economically vulnerable as tourism benefits (e.g., jobs, tax revenues) rely on transportation access and lodging availability. Similar disaster-related impacts may become increasingly common in other coastal tourism-dependent communities due to potential increases in storm intensity and frequency in conjunction with sea-level rise. By identifying the factors and networks that influence early recovery decisions, this project contributes to NSF’s mission to advance national welfare and promote the progress of science. Specifically, this study increases the understanding of individual disaster recovery decisions within the tourism sector, which cumulatively influence a community’s ability to reestablish its built environment and economic base. This study also identifies the communication pathways that enable more informed near-term recovery decisions, which can be activated in future disaster response, tourism crisis management, and community resiliency building efforts.
The goal of our project is to compare the factors and information networks that influence information processing and recovery decision making in two remote post-disaster tourism-dependent communities. This project has four objectives: (1) documenting various factors that influence tourism stakeholders’ recovery decisions; (2) identifying information networks accessed by tourism stakeholders to inform recovery decisions; (3) evaluating the extent to which recovery information activated through those networks is processed; and (4) understanding decision making pathways that influence risk perceptions and intended recovery decisions. These objectives will be accomplished by integrating the Risk Information Seeking and Processing (RISP) model with Social Network Analysis (SNA) in the analysis of data generated during in-depth interviews with tourism business owners, employees, and community leaders, as well as state emergency response officials. Data will be thematically analyzed for factors and RISP model predictors that influence recovery decisions, and information networks will be mapped using SNA to identify influential pathways for recovery decision making. Additionally, community-level data will be compared to identify if, and how, varying infrastructure damage and access to recovery resources impact decision making, which will enhance the transferability of our findings. Collecting these data in a near-term post-disaster context is critical, as the state of a tourism destination (e.g., availability of recovery funds, others’ recovery decisions) impacts the availability of future decision options. The findings will reveal the factors and information pathways that influence disaster recovery decisions in a synergistic examination of business and household recovery decisions. More specifically, the findings will identify the ways in which information processing of current and prior experiences, perceptions of workforce capacity and recovery of the built environment, network support availability, and anticipated tourism demand influence recovery decision making, as well as expose capacity needs to maintain the tourism industry in near-term, post-disaster contexts.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
