Increasing sensitivity of results by using quantile regression analysis for exploring community resilience

• Published in: Ecological indicators 2016-07, Vol.66, p.497-502
• Main Authors: Cohen, Odeya, Bolotin, Arkady, Lahad, Mooli, Goldberg, Avishay, Aharonson-Daniel, Limor
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: CCRAM; collective action; Community resilience; Emergency preparedness; Emergency response plan; income; leadership; lifestyle; logit analysis; Quantile regression; Resilience; surveys; towns
• ISSN: 1470-160X; 1872-7034
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolind.2016.02.012

Community resilience offers a conceptual framework for assessing a community's capacity for coping with environmental changes and emergency situations. It is perceived as a core element of sustainable lifestyle, helping to mitigate the community's reaction to crises by facilitating purposeful and collective action on the part of its’ members. The conjoint community resilience assessment measure (CCRAM) provides a standard measure of community resilience including five factors: leadership, collective efficacy, preparedness, place attachment, and social trust. The mean scores of each the factors portray a community resilience profile and the overall CCRAM score is calculated as the average of the scores of the 21 survey items with an equal weight. Two regression models were employed. Logistic regression, a commonly used tool in the field of applied statistics, and quantile regression, which is a non-parametric method that facilitates the detection of the effect of a regressor on various quantiles of the dependent variable. The study aims to demonstrate the innovative use of quantile regression modeling in community resilience analysis. The results demonstrate that the quantile regression was significantly more sensitive to sub-populations than the logistic regression. Having an income below average, which was negatively correlated with perceived community resilience in the logistic model was found to be significant only in the lower (Q10, Q25) resilience quantiles. Age (per year) and previous involvement in emergency situations which were not noted as significant in the logistic regression, were found to be positively associated with perceived community resilience in the lowest quantile. A difference between quantiles of perceived community resilience was noted in regard to size of community. The association between size of community and perceived community resilience which was negative in the logistic regression (residents of larger towns had lower community resilience), was found to be such only up to quantile 75, but it reversed in the highest quantile. It was concluded that the utilization of quantile regression analysis in studies of community resilience can facilitate the creation of tailored response plans, adapted to the needs of sub (such as weaker) populations and help enhance overall community resilience in crises.