Perceptions of the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan with respect to cultural, information, disaster and social issues

Anawat Suppasri; Miwako Kitamura; Haruka Tsukuda; Sebastien P Boret; Gianluca Pescaroli; Yasuaki Onoda; Fumihiko Imamura; David Alexander; Natt Leelawat; Syamsidik

doi:10.1016/j.pdisas.2021.100158

Perceptions of the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan with respect to cultural, information, disaster and social issues

Prog Disaster Sci. 2021 Apr:10:100158. doi: 10.1016/j.pdisas.2021.100158. Epub 2021 Mar 2.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ International Research Institute of Disaster Science, Tohoku University, Japan.
² Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, Japan.
³ Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction, University College London, United Kingdom.
⁴ Disaster and Risk Management Information Systems Research Group, Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand.
⁵ Tsunami Disaster Mitigation Research Center, Syiah Kuala University, Indonesia.

Abstract

A questionnaire survey was distributed via the Internet to 600 respondents. Preliminary results revealed that most Japanese people regularly washed their hands and had low resistance to wearing masks even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Internet news was the most common source of information. Half of the respondents said they would "stay at home evacuation" if a disaster occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, reflecting the strategy promoted to reduce crowding in evacuation shelters. If a state of emergency must be reinstated, one-third of respondents said they could bear it for a few months and another one-third for a few weeks.

Keywords: COVID-19; Culture; Disaster; Information; Japan; Social impact.