Social Networks and Disaster Risk Perception in Mexico and Ecuador

We examine social aspects of risk perception in seven sites among communities affected by a flood in Mexico (one site), as well by volcanic eruptions in Mexico (one site) and Ecuador (five sites). We conducted over 450 interviews with questions about the danger people feel at the time (after the disaster) about what happened in the past, their current concerns, and their expectations about the future. We explored how aspects of the context in which people live have an effect on the relationship between risk perception and social network factors. Levels of risk perception for past, present, and future aspects of a specific hazard were similar across these two countries and seven sites. However, specific network factors varied from site to site across the countries, thus there was little overlap between sites in the variables that predicted the past, present, or future aspects of risk perception in each site.