Disaster damage, governance readiness, and social capital: cross-national evidence for hazard governance

This study examines whether material/economic disaster damage is associated with social capital across countries and whether national readiness conditions these associations. Drawing on a four-dimensional framework of trust, group, civic, and linking social capital, it combines individual-level World Values Survey data from 1981 to 2022 with country-year indicators of disaster damage, preparedness, and macroeconomic context. The dataset covers more than 100 countries, although the final estimation samples vary across social capital dimensions and model specifications. The findings show a dimension-specific pattern. Disaster damage is positively associated with trust social capital and negatively associated with group social capital, while its associations with civic and linking social capital are statistically insignificant. Preparedness does not moderate these relationships uniformly. Its moderating effect appears only for trust social capital, where higher preparedness strengthens the positive association between disaster damage and trust. Among the readiness dimensions, governance readiness shows the strongest moderating role. Robustness checks support the main trust findings but do not establish temporal persistence. The study contributes to hazard governance and comparative social capital research by showing dimension-specific associations between material/economic disaster damage and social capital and by identifying national readiness as an important contextual condition for trust.