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Effect of critical thinking disposition on household earthquake preparedness

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Yoshinori Nakagawa at Kochi University of Technology
Yoshinori Nakagawa
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Critical thinking is a form of open-minded thinking that aims to gain insight into how to improve things. The focus is on criticism and applicability of the resultant knowledge. Despite the existence of theories linking the critical thinking disposition and hazard adjustment adoption, there have been no previous studies examining the association between this disposition and household earthquake preparedness. The present study intends to identify this association. Data were collected from 598 respondents through a questionnaire survey. Household earthquake preparedness was measured by the number of adjustments adopted in the household. In regression analysis, taking into account interactions between the considered variables, it was found that logical thinking awareness, a subconstruct of the critical thinking disposition, was a significant predictor of household preparedness. Furthermore, inquisitiveness, another subconstruct of critical thinking disposition, was found to moderate the association between risk perception and earthquake preparedness. This finding suggests that people who have the motivation to tackle challenging situations actually do so in the context of earthquake preparedness. The practical implications of the findings are also discussed.
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Effect of critical thinking disposition on household
earthquake preparedness
Yoshinori Nakagawa
1
Received: 9 May 2015 / Accepted: 29 November 2015 / Published online: 11 December 2015
ÓSpringer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015
Abstract Critical thinking is a form of open-minded thinking that aims to gain insight
into how to improve things. The focus is on criticism and applicability of the resultant
knowledge. Despite the existence of theories linking the critical thinking disposition and
hazard adjustment adoption, there have been no previous studies examining the association
between this disposition and household earthquake preparedness. The present study intends
to identify this association. Data were collected from 598 respondents through a ques-
tionnaire survey. Household earthquake preparedness was measured by the number of
adjustments adopted in the household. In regression analysis, taking into account inter-
actions between the considered variables, it was found that logical thinking awareness, a
subconstruct of the critical thinking disposition, was a significant predictor of household
preparedness. Furthermore, inquisitiveness, another subconstruct of critical thinking dis-
position, was found to moderate the association between risk perception and earthquake
preparedness. This finding suggests that people who have the motivation to tackle chal-
lenging situations actually do so in the context of earthquake preparedness. The practical
implications of the findings are also discussed.
Keywords Critical thinking disposition Interaction effect Regression analysis
Adoption of hazard adjustment Earthquake Household
1 Introduction
In Japan and worldwide, there is increasing concern about the occurrence of natural
hazards, especially earthquakes. Damages from earthquakes and loss of life can be reduced
to a great extent if households act before an earthquake to reduce their vulnerability. Thus,
&Yoshinori Nakagawa
nakagawa.yoshinori@kochi-tech.ac.jp
1
School of Management and Economics, Kochi University of Technology, 2-22, Eikokuji,
Kochi City, Japan
123
Nat Hazards (2016) 81:807–828
DOI 10.1007/s11069-015-2107-x
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... They find that inquisitiveness is an essential factor in reaching a conclusion not bounded by people's beliefs. Nakagawa [69] also demonstrates that inquisitiveness is positively correlated with how people are well prepared for possible future disasters by conducting questionnaire surveys in Japan. Another group of studies analyze the role of inquisitiveness in leadership studies at schools and workplaces, generally confirming its importance in experiments and the fields [61,63,70,71]. ...
... We employ the inquisitiveness scale in our survey, which is a subscale of the critical thinking disposition scale developed by Hirayama and Kusumi [59]. This instrument is used to measure one's disposition for curiosity & acceptance of something and someone different and/ or new [59,69,91]. This subscale consists of ten items, including (1) "I want to interact with people with various ways of thinking and learn a lot from them," (2) "I want to keep learning new things throughout my life," (3) "I like to challenge new things," (4) "I want to learn about various cultures," (5) "Learning how foreigners think is meaningful to me," (6) "I am interested in people who have a different way of thinking," (7) "I want to know more about any topic," (8) "I want to learn as much as possible, even if I do not know if it is useful," (9) "It is interesting to discuss with people who have different ideas than me" and (10) "I want to ask someone if I do not know." ...
... The theoretical range is between 10 and 50. This subscale is established as a reliable measure for influencing people's behaviors and attitudes in many important contexts, such as disaster management [69]. ...
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SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS Included in this packet are materials touching on themes I will address during my session. I will not go through these sequentially, nor will I address all of them. They are there simply for reference purposes.
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