The mediating effect of community leadership on community resilience elements and community preparedness

Disasters can occur in various forms with durations ranging from mere hours to days, weeks, or even months of prolonged damages and losses. Approaches taken to face such situation can build resiliency in a community. Lacking it, important community decisions will be made under the constraints of the crisis or disaster. A community with good disaster preparedness and local leadership engagement will be more capable of responding to, and managing disaster risks, which in turn will reduce damages and losses caused by disasters.

This study was conducted to gauge the extent at which community leadership mediates the relationship between community resilience elements (community engagement, community education, and community awareness) and community preparedness. Based on path model analysis, there are significant correlations to prove that community leadership is a viable partial mediator between community engagement, education and awareness, towards enhancing community preparedness. This also means that the presence of a capable community leader may well be a critical success factor to ensure that the respective community is better prepared and more resilient against disasters.