Context-Dependent Socioeconomic Effects on Natural Disaster Risk Perception: A Multilevel Comparison of Seoul and Busan for Sustainable Urban Resilience

Reducing disaster risk is a precondition for sustainable urban development, and residents’ risk perception determines whether protective policy is accepted and acted upon. Risk objectivism, subjectivism, and constructivism each explain this perception but make competing predictions and are rarely tested against one another. This study tests them jointly through a multilevel comparison of Seoul and Busan, which share a national disaster-management framework but diverge in socioeconomic composition and physical risk. Individual data come from two government household surveys conducted in 2020 (Seoul, n = 20,911; Busan, n = 17,828); hazard, exposure, and vulnerability indices were built for all 41 districts from 14 indicators standardized over the pooled district set. Ordered logistic multilevel models show that the socioeconomic gradient reverses sign between the cities: lower income and education accompany higher perceived risk in Busan, the reverse in Seoul. The operative form of social capital also differs, institutional trust in Seoul and interpersonal trust in Busan, and area-level vulnerability predicts perception only in Busan. Individual-level regularities are therefore conditional on place. Because uniform risk communication will reach the most exposed residents in one city and miss them in the other, equitable and locally calibrated strategies are a precondition for sustainable urban resilience.