Evacuation from Natural Disasters: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Research on evacuation from natural disasters has been published across the peer‐reviewed literature among several disparate disciplinary outlets and has suggested a wide variety of predictors of evacuation behavior. We conducted a systematic review to summarize and evaluate the current literature on demographic, storm‐related, and psychosocial correlates of natural disaster evacuation behavior. Eighty‐three eligible papers utilizing 83 independent samples were identified. Risk perception was a consistent positive predictor of evacuation, as were several demographic indicators, prior evacuation behavior, and having an evacuation plan. The influence of prior experiences, self‐efficacy, personality, and links between expected and actual behavior were examined less frequently. Prospective, longitudinal designs are relatively uncommon. Although difficult to conduct in postdisaster settings, more prospective, methodologically rigorous studies would bolster inferences. Results synthesize the current body of literature on evacuation behavior and can help inform the design of more effective predisaster evacuation warnings and procedures.     

Determinants of International Migration Flows to and from Industrialized Countries: A Panel Data Approach Beyond Gravity1

We quantified determinants of international migratory inflows to 17 Western countries and outflows from 13 of these countries between 1950 and 2007 in 77,658 observations from multiple sources using panel-data analysis techniques. To construct a quantitative model that could be useful for demographic projection, we analyzed the logarithm of the number of migrants (inflows and outflows separately) as dependent variables in relation to demographic, geographic, and social independent variables. The independent variables most influential on log inflows were demographic [log population of origin and destination and log infant mortality rate (IMR) of origin and destination] and geographic (log distance between capitals and log land area of the destination). Social and historical determinants were less influential. For log outflows from the 13 countries, the most influential independent variables were log population of origin and destination, log IMR of destination, and log distance between capitals. A young age structure in the destination was associated with lower inflows while a young age structure in the origin was associated with higher inflows. Urbanization in destination and origin increased international migration. IMR affected inflows and outflows significantly but oppositely. Being landlocked, having a common border, having the same official language, sharing a minority language, and colonial links also had statistically significant but quantitatively smaller effects on international migration. Comparisons of models with different assumed correlation structures of residuals indicated that independence was the best assumption, supporting the use of ordinary-least-squares estimation techniques to obtain point estimates of coefficients.     

Modeling distances between humans using Taylor’s law and geometric probability

Taylor’s law states that the variance of the distribution of distance between two randomly chosen individuals is a power function of the mean distance. It applies to the distances between two randomly chosen points in various geometric shapes, subject to a few conditions. In Réunion Island and metropolitan France, at some spatial scales, the empirical frequency distributions of inter-individual distances are predicted accurately by the theoretical frequency distributions of inter-point distances in models of geometric probability under a uniform distribution of points. When these models fail to predict the empirical frequency distributions of inter-individual distances, they provide baselines against which to highlight the spatial distribution of population concentrations.     

Forced Migration,Climate Change,Mitigation and Adaptive Policies in Mexico: Some Functional Relationships

Natural disasters related to hydro-meteorological events have increased during the last few decades, both in frequency and severity. Mexico is heavily exposed to climate change, but has also suffered in the past from climate variability ( Blümel, 2009 ). The new risks oblige the government to develop mitigation processes, while the affected people are implementing strategies of adaptation and resilience-building, mostly at the family and community level. This includes forced migration due to climate change into the slums of megacities or illegal immigration to the United States. The arid, semi-arid and subhumid condition of 49.2 per cent of the territory of Mexico is seriously affected by climate change. In addition, poverty and the lack of jobs have created complex livelihood situations, in which young people leave rural areas, partly due to socio-economic pull factors. In this paper, we address the functional relationships between climate patterns and migration processes in Mexico, highlighting the linkages between the origin of migrants, their economic activity and their vulnerability to extreme events and we discuss long-term climate patterns. Agriculture still uses 78 per cent of the available water in Mexico. In the drylands the competition for water use requires an integrated policy to deal with the new threats from climate change, including mitigation from the top down and adaptation processes from the bottom up to reduce the social vulnerability of the rural population in the highly affected drylands of the central and northern parts of Mexico. The new policy for administering water resources, which promotes the efficient use of an increasingly scarce and polluted resource, still suffers from a lack of participation by the affected rural population. In this paper, we propose an integrated management system from the watershed onwards, involving socio-economic, political, cultural and hydrological variables, to deal with the rising scarcity of water, and the uncertainty and complexity of climate change.     

Empathic Accuracy and Aggression in Couples: Individual and Dyadic Links

The authors examined links between intimate partner aggression and empathic accuracy—how accurately partners can read one another's emotions—during highly affective moments from couples' (N = 109) video recall of laboratory‐based discussions of upsetting events. Less empathic accuracy between partners was generally related to higher levels of aggression by both partners. More specific patterns emerged based on the type of aggression and emotion being expressed. Women's poorer ability to read their partners' vulnerable and positive emotions was linked to both men's and women's greater physical and psychological aggression. Moreover, women's inaccuracy in reading their partner's hostility was linked to women's greater psychological aggression toward the men. Men's inaccuracy in reading their partner's hostility was linked to women's (not men's) greater physical and psychological aggression. The results suggest important nuances in the links between empathic inaccuracy and aggression, and implications for prevention and treatment of partner aggression are discussed.     

Recombinative Generalization of Tacts Through Matrix Training with Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Foss (Journal of Experimental Psychology, 76, 450–459, 1968a; Journal of Experimental Psychology, 77, 341–344, 1968b) compared overlap and non-overlap instruction to promote recombinative response generalization using a matrix training procedure. In the present study, we used a similar set of procedures to teach tacting of kitchen items and prepositions (i.e., relational autoclitics) to three females ages 13–20, diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. We taught some kitchen items/prepositions as tacts (e.g., “the strainer is to the right of the box”) according to a non-overlap instructional sequence. Subsequently, we taught more combinations in an overlap instructional sequence. Each training procedure was followed by probes of untrained relations. Two participants demonstrated recombinative generalization of untrained combinations following the first non-overlap phase, while the third participant demonstrated some response generalization of untrained relations after a few additional training sequences. All three participants demonstrated generalized tacting of object components while two participants showed generalized tacting of preposition components.     

Dynamic effects of financial intermediation over the business cycle

This paper provides a empirical evidence that the financial intermediation disturbances can generate business cycles. We examine three countries whose financial sectors are fully developed but quite distinct in their institutional and regulatory circumstances; thus, we can infer whether financial intermediation disturbances differ across dissimilar financial environments. We find that the dynamic responses of output to financial intermediation shocks exhibit similar patterns in all cases studied. However, the various institutional and regulatory circumstances have generated different propagation mechanisms transmitting the financial disturbance to output in ways that lead the magnitudes of the responses to deviate across economies.