Building a Culture of Preparedness: Using Community Emergency Response Teams to Promote Preparedness Behavior

Communities throughout the nation use the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program to supplement the disaster response after hazard events as well as help build a culture of preparedness. Currently, practitioners and academics have limited knowledge about how CERTs promote enhanced preparedness postures. To address that knowledge gap, 20 CERT program managers were interviewed in this study to improve the general understanding of how CERTs contribute to developing a preparedness culture. The results identify program activities, objectives, and measures. In addition, this study introduces the Preparedness Behavior Change Model and collects feedback on its usefulness, which suggests it has a high degree of understandability as well as perceived and intended utility. Furthermore, this study aligns CERT program activities with the stages of preparedness behavior. Lastly, this study discusses the implications of the present research and its limitations, as well as identifies emerging areas for future research.