Fostering disaster preparedness through community radio in cyclone-prone coastal Bangladesh

Media plays an important role during hazard emergency communication. Community radio, as a part of media, has emerged as a management tool for influencing at-risk people's preparedness for natural disasters. In Bangladesh, the concept of community radio is relatively new in terms of combating cyclone risk in coastal areas, and so far, no study applying mixed-method on role of radio in disaster preparedness has been performed. This study presents an empirical analysis of the role of community radio in disaster preparedness for people at risk in cyclone-prone south and southwestern coastal Bangladesh, where we use economic loss as a proxy of disaster preparedness. Using a multi-stage sampling, 430 households were selected for a questionnaire survey. For the quantitative approach, Ordinary Least Square (OLS) and Binary Logistic regression models were used, along with other parametric and non-parametric tools. For qualitative approach, FGD findings and individual statements were used. The main results of this study suggest that listening to hazard-related programs on both state-operated and community radio has played a significant role in cyclone-related disaster preparedness in terms of minimizing cyclone-induced economic loss. Nevertheless, the distinct feature of broadcasting early warnings in local dialects on a local basis has increased the comprehensibility, information clarity, and reliability of the warning messages delivered by community radio, and this has helped at-risk people to make proper preparations for cyclone risks. Furthermore, this radio appears to help the people at risk to enhance their knowledge and awareness on hazard preparedness, which has made them more experienced to lessen disaster loss over last decade. These issues together appear to have helped community radio listeners to incur a significantly lower degree of economic loss than that of non-listeners (z = 3.11; p < 0.003), implying better disaster preparedness by the listeners.