Effects of cumulative exposures to climate-related disasters on social capital

Abstract

Social capital is recognised as a key resource that supports disaster recovery. Yet, as climate change drives more frequent and overlapping disasters worldwide, our understanding of how consecutive or compounding events affect social capital – its access and capacity to aid community recovery – remains limited. This study investigated how multiple disasters affected social capital and what explained variations in these effects across communities. Using population-based longitudinal data from 2009 to 2019 in Australia, people who experienced home damage from at least one disaster (flood, bushfire, or cyclone) were tracked from pre-disaster to post-disaster years after the first and repeated d..