CEEG Seminar Series: What explains the disaster preparedness of micro enterprises? Examining socio-psychological characteristics and an information provision experiment

On Wednesday, 22 November 2023, Hanna Berkel, Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER and Resident Advisor at the Inclusive growth in Mozambique (IGM) programme will present a paper in progress entitled What explains the disaster preparedness of micro enterprises? Examining socio-psychological characteristics and an information provision experiment. 

The seminar is part of the CEEG Seminar Series, organized under the Inclusive growth in Mozambique (IGM) programme. The seminars offer a forum to share and discuss ongoing research on topics related to the work of the IGM programme and to foster a culture of research at the faculty and at UEM in general.

The seminars take place at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Eduardo Mondlane (UEM). It is a public event open to everyone. The presentation will be given in Portuguese.

About the study

Micro enterprises provide jobs to 90 per cent of the working population in low-and middle-income countries and are disproportionately hit by disasters. To guarantee their survival following a disaster, they need to prepare for disasters. This study is one of the first to examine the socio-psychological characteristics of micro enterprises and their association with disaster preparedness quantitatively. In a second step it includes an experiment providing enterprises with information about specific and easily applicable measures to prepare for disasters (cyclones and floods). The authors find that climate change knowledge, descriptive norms and egoistic values are associated with attitudes towards and de-facto disaster preparedness. Providing information about specific disaster preparedness measures does not improve disaster preparedness. Future information campaigns should influence firm owners' descriptive norms and climate change knowledge to increase firms' disaster preparedness levels.