Emergency support is often delayed after a disaster. Despite the importance of being prepared to deal with the immediate aftermath of disasters, not everyone prepares effectively. While exposure to disasters improves people’s preparedness in the short term, it is yet to be determined whether this improvement is long lasting. In this paper, we use a difference-in-differences method to estimate the causal effects of the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes on people’s preparedness in the short-term (1 month after the second earthquake) and long-term (up to 25 months after the second earthquake). Our results show that people who experienced the earthquakes increase their preparedness by 0.67 standard deviations in the short term. This impact stays positive, but declines to 0.42 standard deviations in the long term.

灾难发生后，紧急援助通常会延迟。尽管做好应对灾难后的准备工作的重要性，但并不是每个人都能有效地进行准备。尽管短期内遭受灾难会提高人们的备灾能力，但尚需确定这种改善是否持久。在本文中，我们使用差异法估算2010年和2011年坎特伯雷地震在短期（第二次地震后1个月）和长期（长达25个月）对人们备灾的因果关系上第二次地震后）。我们的结果表明，经历过地震的人们在短期内将准备水平提高了0.67个标准差。这种影响保持正向，但长期来看会下降至0.42标准偏差。