Determinants of resilience to Covid-19: A cross-country analysis of coping capacity, adaptive capacity, and disaster risk management

Abstract

Disaster research often operates within siloed frameworks, failing to effectively integrate the resilience and disaster risk management (DRM) paradigms, thus presenting a critical gap in understanding resilience outcomes comprehensively. This study aims to bridge this gap by integrating these frameworks and exploring the relationships among coping, adaptive, and DRM capacities and COVID-19 resilience outcomes. Through a literature review, this research clarifies the key concepts. Coping capacity helps social systems cope with disasters, while adaptive capacity promotes adaptability and transformation for evolving challenges. Both generic capacities are essential to DRM capacity, which involves managing disaster risks through planned actions. The study identifies pre-disaster and post-disaster DRM as components of DRM capacity, institutional quality, collaborative governance, and social capital as adaptive capacities, while coping capacity is treated as a single component. Taking the ex-post resilience measurement approach, disaster resilience outcome is measured using excess mortality associated with the pandemic. Quantitative analysis employing partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) across 129 countries forms the backbone of this research. Additionally, a comparative case study of Thailand and Nepal was undertaken through desk research in order to explore the pandemic risk management capacity and to draw conclusive insights. The findings highlight the critical role of pre-disaster DRM in enhancing postdisaster DRM capacity, emphasizing the importance of the proactive management of biological hazards. A very high level of post-disaster DRM capacity correlates with better resilience outcomes, while intermediate levels may be counterproductive, as indicated by a quadratic relationship. Higher coping capacity, institutional quality, and collaborative governance significantly strengthen pre-disaster DRM capacity, underscoring the importance of generic resilience building capacities in proactive DRM. Higher coping capacity and institutional quality are associated with higher postdisaster DRM capacity. The study highlights the crucial role of strong government institutions in pandemic management, improvising, and addressing preparedness gaps. However, the positive link between collaborative governance and post-disaster DRM was not significant. Interestingly, a higher level of collaborative governance was associated with lower resilience outcomes, although this association also lacked statistical significance. On the other hand, case studies highlight the importance of government-led collaboration in disaster response. This study attributed the mixed findings to challenges in trust building and coordination during the response phase. Overall, collaborative government has benefits and drawbacks, and its effect may not be significant when considered alongside other factors. The impact of coping capacity and institutional quality on resilience outcomes displayed quadratic effects, indicating better outcomes at very low and high levels of capacity, but counterproductive effects at intermediate levels, potentially due to increased virus transmission risks combined with inadequate capacities in countries with moderate levels of capacity. This emphasizes the importance of maintaining very high coping capacity and institutional quality. Lastly, the study firmly established that higher social capital correlates with better disaster resilience, enabling adherence to pandemic measures and cooperation. The present study underscores the importance of taking a long-term approach to disaster resilience and integrating resilience and DRM perspectives in both disaster research and practice. In order to address systemic risks and unexpected challenges, the study recommends building societal capacities, such as investing in healthcare infrastructure, universal healthcare, social protection, enhancing government accountability and effectiveness, and fostering collaborative governance, along with building comprehensive DRM capacity. Future research should focus on assessing resilience at the community level using this integrated approach.