While evacuation decision-making has been extensively studied over the past decades, few studies examine the basis for these decisions: the locations of family and friends who can provide evacuees with social support at evacuation destinations. To address this gap, we conduct a multivariate regression analysis of social–spatial network data gathered from survey respondents in three U.S. areas to understand the relationship between evacuees’ social networks, opportunities for social support, and planned evacuation destinations. Our findings show that the locations of evacuees’ family and friends influence where they plan to go during an evacuation. Evacuees with closer family and friends plan to travel shorter distances than evacuees whose family and friends live farther away. Furthermore, we observe that unsupported evacuees–citizens traveling to destinations outside their social network–plan to travel twice as far as supported evacuees–citizens traveling to destinations where family and friends can offer instrumental, informational, or emotional assistance. These findings suggest new opportunities to predict and model evacuation logistics decisions based on the geographic distribution of evacuees’ social networks and the opportunities for social support they provide.

尽管在过去几十年中对疏散决策进行了广泛的研究，但很少有研究检查这些决策的基础：可以在疏散目的地为被疏散者提供社会支持的家人和朋友的位置。为了弥补这一差距，我们对从美国三个地区的调查受访者那里收集的社会空间网络数据进行了多元回归分析，以了解撤离者的社交网络、社会支持机会和计划撤离目的地之间的关系。我们的研究结果表明，被疏散者家人和朋友的位置会影响他们在疏散期间计划去哪里。与家人和朋友住得较远的撤离者相比，与家人和朋友较近的撤离者计划旅行更短的距离。此外，我们观察到不受支持的撤离者——前往社交网络以外目的地的公民——计划旅行距离是受支持撤离者的两倍——前往家人和朋友可以提供工具、信息或情感帮助的目的地的公民。这些发现提出了新的机会，可以根据疏散者社交网络的地理分布以及他们提供的社会支持机会来预测和模拟疏散物流决策。