Analysis of post-disaster damage and disruptive impacts on the operating status of small businesses after Hurricane Katrina

When small businesses are impacted by natural hazard events, hazard and sociological researchers may have access to collect data from a sample of open businesses, in hopes of distilling lessons that might help reduce vulnerability to future disasters. Lessons from demised businesses might be more us...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Natural hazards (Dordrecht) 2017-02, Vol.85 (3), p.1637-1663
Main Authors: Sydnor, Sandra, Niehm, Linda, Lee, Yoon, Marshall, Maria, Schrank, Holly
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Civil Engineering
Damage
Delay
Disaster recovery
Disasters
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
Environmental Management
Geophysics/Geodesy
Geotechnical Engineering & Applied Earth Sciences
Hazards
Hurricanes
Hydrogeology
Impact damage
Natural Hazards
Original Paper
Property damage
Small business
Sustainability
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Summary:When small businesses are impacted by natural hazard events, hazard and sociological researchers may have access to collect data from a sample of open businesses, in hopes of distilling lessons that might help reduce vulnerability to future disasters. Lessons from demised businesses might be more useful in reducing business closure for increasing business sustainability to disasters. Using interviews from a random sample of 371 open and 126 closed businesses’ experiences with Hurricane Katrina, discrete choice methods examine the relationship between the impact of post-disaster damage, loss of lifelines, types of delays in reopening, and cascading damages on business continuity. This unique sample offers the opportunity to determine whether damage to operating businesses was different than that of demised businesses. Respondents provided pre-Katrina data up through the last interviews in 2013. Results demonstrate that damage may have a short-term effect on operating status; it was associated with immediate demise but had much less effect on longer-term recovery. Additionally, it is evident that there is one path to failure. Businesses that did reopen, but later closed, may have been impacted by a cascade of both exogenous and endogenous shocks.
ISSN:0921-030X
1573-0840
DOI:10.1007/s11069-016-2652-y