Digital literacy for enhancing preparedness capacity to climate related risks among ageing population in Bankgok, Thailand

Abstract

The elderly population is amongst the most vulnerable group confronting climate related risks. This research aims to assess flood hazards distribution and investigate factors influencing flood literacy and preparedness actions among the elderly in Bangkok, Thailand. The AHP-GIS technique, land-use, drainage density, and annual maximum rainfall are the most important factors that influence flood hazard in Bangkok while land subsidence, past flooding events, and slope of the city have the lowest scores. Around 50% (784.089 sq.km.) of total area, mainly situated in the economic centers, is defined as high hazard. The results of policy analysis found that lack of integration of ageing population policy and disaster risk reduction were the key barriers to reduce vulnerability to flood hazard. SWOT analysis found that lack of effective integrated policy for ageing population and flood preparedness, limited training session on flood management, and low literacy skills of the elderly were the key barriers to strengthening flood resilience. A questionnaire survey was conducted with elderly respondents (n = 736) who are living in Bangkok. The results revealed that many senior citizens have limited experience in using information communication technology and low digital and media literacy for flood preparedness. Approximately 75% had neither communicated nor shared flood information and preparedness actions via social network platforms. Almost half of the respondents reported negative feelings of fear and fatalism toward flood disasters. Approximately 13% of respondents obtained information before flood events via Facebook and Line applications. Less than 2% of the elderly assessed to the national/provincial web-based platform. Elderly females showed higher flood literacy and tended to take more preparedness action than male counterparts (p < 0.05). Education and income significantly affected their flood literacy and preparedness actions. Elderly residing in low hazard areas tended to have lower flood preparedness literacy, but higher flood preparedness action. In the Protection Motivation Theory, statistical analysis revealed that there were significant positive correlations among risk perception, understanding of preparedness measures, perceived self-efficacy, feeling of helplessness, past flood experiences, and threat appraisal of perceived flood probability and consequences and ability for flood preparedness and response action (p < 0.01). To enhance flood preparedness literacy and flood preparedness action amongst ageing population, promoting flood literacy by using information and communication technology for elderly, ease-of-use and availability, flood preparedness action in advance, strengthening emotional well-being to cope with flood, enhancing disaster risk perception, empowering elderly integration into disaster and climate related policies, and arranging flood training program are policy recommendations.