The role of household social capital in post-disaster recovery: An empirical study in Japan

This study examined social capital as a means of accessing resources embedded in social ties and aimed to debate its character in the context of informal support in post-disaster recovery. The three following issues were examined: (1) How respondents obtain disaster resources from social capital (including the bonding and bridging types of social capital), (2) why certain individuals have less informal support (e.g., the relationship between informal support and dynamic social capital), and (3) the relationship between social capital and recovery satisfaction according to previous studies on cognitive social capital and satisfaction. A questionnaire was thus conducted on the island of Izu-Oshima after it incurred serious damage due to a typhoon (no. 26) that struck in 2013. This study's findings were as follows: (1) Bonding social capital support resulted in various and major forms of support during post-disaster recovery. Notably, neighbors and friends utilized the flow of information to find support. Bridging social capital complemented supplies and partial psychological support when bonding social capital experienced functional failure during the same disaster. (2) Those who increased contact through bonding social ties (e.g., neighbors, friends, and coworkers living in the same community) had higher various support rates after the disaster. (3) Those who accepted informal support and had higher levels of government trust had significantly positive results for recovery satisfaction.