Communities across the globediffer in history, culture, and beliefs; and these differences may help drive how communities process, learn from, and recover after a disaster. When faced with natural disasters, communities respond in diverse ways, with processes that reflect their cultures, needs, the type and extent of damage incurred and resources available to the community. Chapter 5 of Community Disaster Recovery: Moving from Vulnerability to Resilience articulates the ways in which internal community characteristics influence the disaster recovery processes and decisions made by local governments. Prior disaster experience and damage from the most recent disaster, along with perceptions of problem severity and future risk perceptions can influence the degree to which residents view disasters as an increasing and urgent problem for their local governments to manage. Finally, local government information dissemination during disaster recovery can serve two important roles: (1) garnering support for local government action and trust in government decisions, along with (2) incorporating a range of views beyond only technocratic experts to build innovative policy solutions.

As discussed in Chapter 5, risk perceptions may be influenced by personal experiences, deeply held beliefs, and political ideology. But individual risk perceptions may also be affected by engagement in social processes, such as information seeking and participation in disaster-related discussions. Information sought and consumed after a disaster and trust in these sources of information may influence how individuals think about a disaster, its causes, and support (or not) of policy solutions (see Figure III.1). Furthermore, experiencing a disaster may erode trust in officials that are charged with managing disaster-related risks. Levels of trust in government officials may in turn influence information seeking and support for policy action. This chapter investigates the relationships among individual experiences, information seeking, participation in flood recovery processes, and attitudes toward risk mitigation actions.