Disaster Risk Perception, Sense of Pace, Evacuation Willingness, and Relocation Willingness of Rural Households in Earthquake-Stricken Areas: Evidence from Sichuan Province, China

Based on survey data from 327 rural households in the areas affected by the Wenchuan Earthquake and Lushan Earthquake in Sichuan Province, this study systematically analyzed disaster risk perception, sense of place, evacuation willingness, and relocation willingness among residents in these earthquake-stricken areas. Further, this study constructed an ordinal logistic regression analysis to probe the correlations between residents’ disaster risk perception or sense of place and evacuation willingness and relocation willingness, respectively. The results showed that (1) faced with the threat of earthquake disasters, residents have a strong willingness to evacuate and relocate. Specifically, 93% and 78% of the residents in the Wenchuan Earthquake and Lushan Earthquake areas were willing to evacuate and relocate, respectively, whereas 4% and 17% of the residents were unwilling to evacuate and relocate, respectively. (2) Place dependence and the severity of disaster occurrence were significantly positively correlated with residents’ evacuation willingness, while the interaction term between place dependence and the severity of disaster occurrence was negatively related to residents’ evacuation willingness. Specifically, when everything else remains constant, every one-unit increase in place dependence and severity corresponds to increases in the odds of willingness to evacuate by factors of 0.042 and 0.051, respectively; every one-unit increase in place dependence × severity corresponds to a decrease in the odds of willingness to evacuation by a factor of 0.004. (3) Place identity was significantly negatively correlated with residents’ relocation willingness, while place dependence and severity of disaster occurrence were positively related to residents’ relocation willingness. The interaction term between place dependence and the severity of disaster occurrence as well as the interaction term between place identity and severity of disaster occurrence were significantly negatively correlated with residents’ relocation willingness. Specifically, every one-unit increase in place identity corresponds to a decrease in the odds of willingness to relocate by a factor of 0.034, while every one-unit increase in place dependence and severity corresponds to increases in the odds of willingness to relocate by factors of 0.041 and 0.028, respectively, and every one-unit increase in place dependence × severity and place identity × severity corresponds to decreases in the odds of willingness to relocate by factors of 0.003 and 0.003, respectively.