Assessing Trust in First Responder Organizations Related to Emergency Management: A Boolean Approach

Abstract

America is seeing a rise in severe weather, which is affecting communities with little to no experience with severe storms. In these moments, communities look to all levels of government to help recover from events. However, the country’s trust in the government is currently at an all-time low. The lack of trust impairs a community’s ability to prepare, accept a preventative policy, and overall work with the government. Recent work has found that household preparedness may be related to trust in government. These recent findings show that low levels of trust may reduce the probability that households follow government advice on preparedness. In this paper, we find in our statistical analysis that trust in first responders positively influences household preparedness. Our findings highlight the importance of first responders in preparing communities for storms in the United States.