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Household impacts of interruption to electric power and water services

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Natural Hazards
Authors:
Alexia Stock at University of Delaware
Alexia Stock
Rachel Davidson at University of Delaware
Rachel Davidson
James Kendra
James Kendra
James Kendra
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V. Nuno Martins at University of Delaware
V. Nuno Martins
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Critical infrastructure systems derive their importance from the societal needs they help meet. Yet the relationship between infrastructure system functioning and societal functioning is not well-understood, nor are the impacts of infrastructure system disruptions on consumers. We develop two empirical measures of societal impacts—willingness to pay (WTP) to avoid service interruptions and a constructed scale of unhappiness, compare them to each other and others from the literature, and use them to examine household impacts of service interruptions. Focusing on household-level societal impacts of electric power and water service interruptions, we use survey-based data from Los Angeles County, USA, to fit a random effects within-between model of WTP and an ordinal logit with mixed effects to predict unhappiness, both as a function of infrastructure type, outage duration, and household attributes. Results suggest household impact increases nonlinearly with outage duration, and the impact of electric power disruptions is greater than water supply disruptions. Unhappiness is better able to distinguish the effects of shorter-duration outages than WTP is. Some people experience at least some duration of outage without negative impact. Increased household impact was also associated with using electricity for medical devices or water for work or business, perceived likelihood of an emergency, worry about an emergency, past negative experiences with emergencies, lower level of preparation, less connection to the neighborhood, higher income, being married, being younger, having pets, and having someone with a medical condition in the house. Financial, time/effort, health, and stress concerns all substantially influence the stated level of unhappiness.
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Natural Hazards (2023) 115:2279–2306
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-022-05638-8
1 3
ORIGINAL PAPER
Household impacts ofinterruption toelectric power
andwater services
AlexiaStock1· RachelA.Davidson1 · JamesKendra2· V.NunoMartins3·
BradleyEwing4· LindaK.Nozick5· KateStarbird6· MaggieLeon‑Corwin7
Received: 12 August 2021 / Accepted: 21 September 2022 / Published online: 4 November 2022
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2022
Abstract
Critical infrastructure systems derive their importance from the societal needs they help
meet. Yet the relationship between infrastructure system functioning and societal func-
tioning is not well-understood, nor are the impacts of infrastructure system disruptions on
consumers. We develop two empirical measures of societal impacts—willingness to pay
(WTP) to avoid service interruptions and a constructed scale of unhappiness, compare them
to each other and others from the literature, and use them to examine household impacts of
service interruptions. Focusing on household-level societal impacts of electric power and
water service interruptions, we use survey-based data from Los Angeles County, USA, to
fit a random effects within-between model of WTP and an ordinal logit with mixed effects
to predict unhappiness, both as a function of infrastructure type, outage duration, and
household attributes. Results suggest household impact increases nonlinearly with outage
duration, and the impact of electric power disruptions is greater than water supply disrup-
tions. Unhappiness is better able to distinguish the effects of shorter-duration outages than
WTP is. Some people experience at least some duration of outage without negative impact.
Increased household impact was also associated with using electricity for medical devices
or water for work or business, perceived likelihood of an emergency, worry about an emer-
gency, past negative experiences with emergencies, lower level of preparation, less connec-
tion to the neighborhood, higher income, being married, being younger, having pets, and
having someone with a medical condition in the house. Financial, time/effort, health, and
stress concerns all substantially influence the stated level of unhappiness.
Keywords Infrastructure system· Lifeline· Outage· Electric power· Water· Household
* Rachel A. Davidson
rdavidso@udel.edu
1 Department ofCivil andEnvironmental Engineering, University ofDelaware, Newark, DE, USA
2 Biden School ofPublic Policy andAdministration, University ofDelaware, Newark, DE, USA
3 Disaster Research Center, University ofDelaware, Newark, DE, USA
4 Rawls College ofBusiness, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA
5 School ofCivil andEnvironmental Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
6 Human Centered Design andEngineering, University ofWashington, Seattle, WA, USA
7 Department ofSociology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... In summary, previous academic communities put more emphasis on the research of infrastructure systems themselves and contributed substantially to protecting infrastructure. Indeed, infrastructure systems are critical because of their role in societal functioning, especially in situations where modern societies become increasingly dependent on infrastructure systems [7,29]. However, precisely how infrastructure service disruptions impair society is poorly understood owing to the difficulties in quantitatively measuring the societal impact and integrating it with disruptions [8,9,29]. ...
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... In the dimension of subjective well-being impact, researchers mainly from social science measured individuals' negative perceptions and feelings about infrastructure disruptions by different theoretical frameworks or dimensions, including the hardship experience, deprivation cost, and negative emotions. Correspondingly, the quantifiable instruments or indicators are proposed and measured using social surveys in specific cases to evaluate the impact [29]. The specifics are as follows. ...
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