Disaster perception and preparation among foreign versus local university students in Japan: A comparative study
Open accessAbstract
Foreign residents in Japan are considered particularly vulnerable to various disasters; accordingly, previous studies have documented their experiences in the context of how and why they are more vulnerable to certain disasters. However, only a few have compared this group's vulnerability to that of Japanese individuals. Thus, this study aims to compare the vulnerability of foreign and Japanese people to disasters, focusing particularly on university students. A quantitative methodology involving a questionnaire survey conducted on 133 foreign and 150 Japanese students was adopted. The results reveal that many international students had experienced an earthquake for the first time after coming to Japan. Therefore, they possessed a lower degree of knowledge of such disaster events compared to the wider Japanese population. Another notable finding is that more Japanese students felt anxious about the types of disasters and were worried about a given disaster's impact on their lives, in terms of danger to life, collapse of homes, and paralysis of the transportation network. However, Japanese respondents were less prepared for disasters than international students. Therefore, the findings suggest the need to provide disaster-related seminars and drills for international students for their knowledge enhancement and to establish preparatory efforts among Japanese students.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
International students were significantly less likely than Japanese students to report knowing the location of nearby evacuation shelters.
“International students were significantly less likely than Japanese students to report knowing the location of nearby evacuation shelters”
From A comparative study on Earthquake Preparedness of Japanese and International Students in a Nankai Trough Earthquake-threatened Area in Shikoku, Japan (2026) · cites this paper as [34]
Figure 7 (Additional information; page unavailable) lists “Know the location of evacuation shelters” at 36.2% for international students and 25.9% for Japanese students, with no significance marker for that item. Section 3.2 reports significant differences in awareness of designated shelters and in not knowing where to evacuate, but those are different questions from knowing a shelter’s location. (LLM, conf=0.82)
Checked by a reasoning model — may be wrong.
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredInternational students in Japan face distinct vulnerabilities and challenges including limited disaster knowledge, low levels of practical preparedness, emotional stress, and reliance on peer networks for information and support.
“These concerns are reinforced by recent studies that identify a range of challenges faced by international students in Japan, including limited disaster knowledge, low levels of practical preparedness, emotional stress, and reliance on peer networks for information and support (Bhandari, 2022;Gómez, 2013;Iizuka, 2022;Koike et al., 2024).”
From Assessing earthquake preparedness in a culturally diverse international students population: a case of Ehime university in Shikoku, Japan (2025) · cites this paper as Iizuka, 2022
The Introduction reports limited disaster knowledge and reliance on family and same-nationality friends for information. Section 3.2 documents disaster-related anxiety, but finds it was generally greater among Japanese students. Sections 3.3 and 4.4 find that international students made more preparations than comparable Japanese students, contrary to the implication that they had especially low practical preparedness; reliance on peers for support, beyond information, is not established. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredIizuka found that international students reported higher levels of several disaster-preparedness actions than Japanese students despite lower awareness of evacuation shelters and hazard maps.
“Notably, Iizuka found that this knowledge gap did not necessarily correspond to lower self-reported preparatory action: international students reported higher levels of several disaster-preparedness actions than Japanese students, despite lower awareness of evacuation shelters and hazard maps [34].”
From A comparative study on Earthquake Preparedness of Japanese and International Students in a Nankai Trough Earthquake-threatened Area in Shikoku, Japan (2026) · cites this paper as [34]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
No references could be resolved yet.
Research works printed but not linked: 15
- Tamura T. Saigaiji ni okeru gaikokuji eno taiou. Forum on Local Authorities for International Relations 2017;332:2-5.
- Kawata Y, Funaki N. Daigakusei no bosai ishiki ni tsuiteno chousa kenkyuu. Disaster information 2004;2:115-9.
- Okamoto K. Gaikokujin wo saigai jakusya ni shinai tameniwa. In: Symposium Proceedings. Nagoya University; 2006.
- Gomez OA. Lessons from international students' reaction to the 2011 great East Japan earthquake: the case of the School of Engineering at Tohoku University. International Journal of Disaster Risk Science 2013;4(3):137-49. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s13753-013-0015-9. · DOI · Paper page
- Abe M. Kumamoto jishin no keiken kara miru hinanjo unei to hinansya taiou. Fukko. 2017;8(2):24-30.
- Haburi S, Takahashi E, Miura Y, Matsui.. Nihonjin daigakusei oyobi zainichi ryuugakusei no bousai koudou no kiteiin no kentou: Zainichi ryuugakusei ni tokuyuu na kiteiin ni chakumoku shite. Tsukuba Psychological Research 2016;52: 67-76.
- Todoroki Y, Takahashi S, Yamashita N. Nihonjin gakusei to ryuugakusei no bosai ni taisuru ishiki ni tsuite: ankeito chousa no bunseki. Reports of Lifetime Education and Research Center of Kagawa University 2018;23:75-81.
- Utsunomiya University. Utsunomiya University Databook 2019. https://we b-pamphlet.jp/utsunomiya-u/2019p1/html5.html#page=1. Last accessed on 7 July 2021. 2019. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2005.084335. · DOI
- Iizuka A, Kondo S. Gaikokujin ryuugakusei no bosai ishiki ya taisaku ni kansuru kousatsu. In: Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Institute of Social Safety Science; 2018. p. 43.
- Tierney K. Disasters: A sociological approach. Cambridge: Polity Press; 2019.
- Nepal V, Banerjee D, Perry M, Scott D. Disaster preparedness of linguistically isolated populations: practical issues for planners. Health Promot Pract 2012;13(2): 265-71. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524839910384932. · DOI
- Donner W, Rodriguez H. Population composition, migration and inequality: the influence of demographic changes on disaster risk and vulnerability. Soc Forces 2008;87(2):1089-114. https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.0.0141. · DOI
- Morrow BH. Identifying and mapping community vulnerability. Disasters. 1999;23 (1):1-18. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-7717.00102. · DOI
- Iijima K. Ryuugakusei no bosai ishiki: Shitsumonshi chousa no kekka kara. Journal of Kobe Yamate University 2017;19.
- Thorup-Binger C, Charania NA. Vulnerability and capacities of international students in the face of disasters in Auckland, New Zealand: a qualitative descriptive study. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 2019;39. https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.ijdrr.2019.101136. · DOI · Paper page
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Atalyan, T., & Bhandary, N. P. (2025) · Journal of Disaster Science and Management · doi:10.1007/s44367-025-00024-0 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
Atalyan, T., & Bhandary, N. P. (2026) · Natural Hazards Research · doi:10.1016/j.nhres.2026.07.004
- Authors
- Iizuka, A.
- Venue
- Progress in Disaster Science
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2022-10
- Volume
- 15
- Pages
- 100239
- ISSN
- 2590-0617 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4282048889
- Cited by
- 13
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 1
- FWCI
- 2.85
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Progress in Disaster Science (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- SSRN Electronic Journal (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Institutional Repositories DataBase (IRDB) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JP21K12380)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Disaster Management and Resilience
- Social Sciences › Transportation › Earthquake and Disaster Impact Studies
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Risk Perception and Management
- Keywords
- disaster preparedness, disaster perception, international students, foreign residents, earthquake knowledge, university students, disaster drills, Japan
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
