Coping with "Natural" Hazards as Stressors: The Predictors of Activism in a Flood Disaster

This article reconsiders the long-standing assumption that natural disasters such as floods are uncontrollable environmental events that provide no basis for collective protest. We do this by considering the rise of protest following a flood disaster in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1986. Empirically, we construct and test a social psychological model of activism combining disaster interpretation, appraisal of future threat of flooding, and individual coping mechanisms. The results indicate that a victim's interpretation of flooding as controllable was directly related to activism and indirectly related through feelings of threat and coping strategies. Our findings point to the ways that recent agent- specific typologies of disaster have overlooked the potential for conflict in "natural" disasters because they gloss over issues of differential interpretation and appraisal. The article concludes with an elaboration of several theoretical implications.