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Volume 5, Issue 1, November 2021
Restarting business after river floods
The impacts of river floods on small and medium-scale enterprises are significantly felt in the damage and losses experienced by owners and managers who are already saddled with keeping going their businesses related to food, industry, and farm. Such depressing experiences, evident likewise on their flood disaster risk perceptions, should have reduced the value of the place of their business operations or entrepreneurial activities. But they insisted on remaining and rebuilding after disastrous floods rather than stopping or relocating away from hazards. Interestingly, this survey of a non-probability sample of 36 enterprise owners and managers along the Ocoy River in Negros Oriental, Philippines, revealed that flood disaster risk perception is positively and significantly related to their sense of place. Incidentally, they had a low disaster preparedness, although not significantly associated with these two variables, suggesting the high value they assigned to their communities despite a high flood risk. Only place dependence as an economic component of the sense of place was positively and significantly related to flood disaster preparedness which explains their reluctance to relocate. Therefore, as part of enterprises; formal requirements for a business permit, the entrepreneurs must undergo flood disaster preparedness orientation to adapt to climate change.
