Factors motivating Mexico City residents to earthquake mass evacuation drills

Santos-Reyes, Jaime

Evacuation drills may constitute a key activity for preparing for an emergency due to an earthquake. The paper presents the results of an analysis of participants' motivations on the factors leading to conducting drills on 19 September every year in Mexico City; the sample size considered for the analysis was N = 2400. In particular, the following research question has been addressed: What factors predict the likelihood that respondents would report that they agree on conducting mass evacuation drills yearly? The approach has been the application of logistic regression technique to identify these factors. Of the 19 initial explanatory variables, in the final model, only seven variables and one interaction term, were significantly associated with the outcome variable; i.e.: age (Odds Ratio (OR) = 1.366; 95% Confidence Interval (CI) = 1.039–1.795); occupation (OR = 3.378; CI = 1.457–7.830); frequency of drills: one/year (OR = 2.128; CI = 1.610–2.812); knowledge vs. drills (OR = 1.394; CI = 1.172–1.658); ‘perception vulnerability city’ (OR = 1.271; CI = 1.091–1.480); warning time (OR = 1.266; CI = 1.1036–1.548); usefulness of the SASMEX (OR = 0.783; CI = 0.615-0.998); and ‘perception vulnerability city’ by occupation interaction (OR = 0.786; CI = 0.643-0.961). Further research may be needed to gain a better understanding of people's motivations on evacuation drills taking place anytime during the day or at night, and whether evacuation drills should be unannounced.