Abstract:

Although the long-term effects of disasters and the factors that affect the ability to recover have received increasing attention from social science researchers has been conducted on the processes and out comes associated with business disaster recovery. This article attempts to fill that void by exploring the determinants of business disaster recovery. We develop a model of business recovery by drawing from existing research on disaster recovery and on organizational survival in nondisaster contexts and test it by using data collected from a stratified random sample of 110 Los Angeles area firms affected by the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Business size, disruption of business operations due to the earthquake, earthquake shaking intensity, and the utilization of postdisaster aid are all predictors of business recovery. Size helps businesses weather disaster losses, just as it proves advantageous in nondisaster contexts. How businesses fare following disasters depends not only on direct physical impacts but also on how disasters subsequently affect business operations, as well as on ecological and neighborhood-level impacts. The aid to help them recover; it may actually create additional, such a s higher debt.

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