Browsing by Subject "Retirement communities"
Item Developing resilience through communication and community : natural disaster preparedness in retirement communities(2020-05-14) Robertson, Brett William; Stephens, Keri K.; Barbour, Joshua B; Donovan, Erin E; Murthy, DhirajOlder adults are considered one of the most vulnerable populations in natural disasters, and our knowledge of the communicative processes behind their disaster preparations is limited. Extant research has called for more scholarship to understand the antecedents to their preparations. One promising area in the literature is the notion of community for older adults. While perceptions of community have positive health benefits, there is little work that investigates the role of community perceptions in the natural disaster context for older adults. The focus of this effort is to bring more attention to the role that community and organizations have on risk behaviors for older adults by extending Witte’s (1992) Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM). To accomplish this goal, this study incorporates the concept of community-efficacy into the perceptions of efficacy component of the model to better understand intention toward preparing in advance for natural disasters for older adults living in continuing care retirement communities (CCRCs). EPPM, generally an individual-centered health communication theory, includes the concepts of threat and efficacy, but overlooks a collective component, community-efficacy. Using quantitative survey data from two CCRCs in U.S., this research contributes to communication scholarship by highlighting how community-efficacy uniquely explains a significant, but small amount of additional variance on the intention to prepare for natural disasters above all other predictors in EPPM. This dissertation’s extension of the perceived efficacy components of EPPM can be useful at predicting older adults’ future disaster preparedness behaviors. Given the role of community resilience during natural disasters, as well as the beneficial impact of community within retirement communities, this dissertation examined several variables that influence the intention to prepare. The results show that disaster management perceptions, community identification, and response-efficacy moderate the relationship between community-efficacy and intention to prepare, while previous experience with natural disasters and communication with others before a natural disaster predicts the intention to prepare. Together, the investigation of these variables provides insight into both theoretical and practical considerations needed for understanding disaster preparations in the older adult context.