Gina Yannitell Reinhardt, Ph.D.
gina.reinhardt@essex.ac.uk
University of Essex
Phone: 7470002697
Address: Wivenhoe Park, WIVENHOE PARK
City: COLCHESTER, England - CO4 3SQ
Country: United Kingdom
About Me:
I study how citizens and policy makers make decisions under uncertainty, and how those decisions affect economic, social, and political development and subsequent policy outcomes. I focus specifically on disaster resilience and international development, asking how development financing can be judiciously allocated to help avert, alleviate, mitigate, and manage disasters. My work can be found in journals such as World Development, Political Analysis, Political Research Quarterly, the Journal of Risk Research, and the Review of Policy Research. I am active in theatre, and in the fight against discrimination and domestic violence. I speak Portuguese and Japanese, and I play the drums and the harp.
Research Interests
Development
Foreign Aid
Formal Theory
NGOs
Political Economy
Public Policy
Public Opinion
International Development Institutions
Climate Change Adaptation
States Of Emergency
Disaster Politics
Politics Of Disaster
Natural Disasters
Disaster Displacement
Public Management
Emergency Management
Natural Hazard
Hazards Governance
Foreign Aid
Foreign Assistance
Distrust In Government
Institutional Trust
Trust In Institutions
Environmental Migration
Intersectionality
Aid Evaluation Politics
Evaluation
Monitoring & Evaluation
Randomized Controlled Trials
Field Experiments
Survey Experiments
Proportional Hazards Modelling
Difference-in-Difference Analysis
Nonparametric Analysis
Countries of Interest
Malawi
Kenya
South Africa
Mozambique
Nepal
Bangladesh
Sri Lanka
Mauritius
Japan
Hong Kong
Publications:
Journal Articles:
Objectives This article provides an overview of how the interdisciplinary field of disaster studies contributes to the social sciences. Methods The following themes are explored in relation to the articles contained in the special issue: disasters are social and political phenomena that generate policy change, disasters reflect and affect democratic governance, and disasters reveal shared experience and collective identity. Results Disaster studies bridge the social sciences theoretically and methodologically. Given the scope of disaster impacts—across social, political, economic, ecological, and infrastructure spheres—and the policy response they garner involving public, private, and civic actors, they offer a lens by which to see society and politics in a way that no other critical events can. Conclusion Disaster studies offer important applications of social science theories and concepts that expand the field, broaden our reach as social scientists, and deepen our understanding of fundamental social processes and behaviors in meaningful ways.
We synthesise the themes and contributions of this special issue on local emergency management. Despite extensive international efforts focused on climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction and management, these challenges are local. Local governments are the first line of response and management, dealing with the intersection of climate change, disaster response and fiscal austerity. We contribute to the local government and hazard management literature by engaging the ongoing debate to define resilience and adaptation, locating these concepts within local administrative practice. We demonstrate that international relations paradigms can help conceptualise local governance challenges. We draw out themes of social capital, information, and collaboration between government and non-government actors in building resilience. Ultimately, we provide insight into the emerging challenges and pioneering approaches undertaken to building resilience across multiple countries, along with evidence-based strategies and practical approaches to juggling the demands of service delivery, austerity and an evolving hazard-scape.
Can public administrators use community education interventions in disaster management? We examine community education interventions as tools that raise awareness of hazards, communicate risks, and develop resilience in communities. We study a programme in Essex County, UK, in which Essex County Fire and Rescue Services used the results of proportional hazards modelling to identify localities at risk of accidental dwelling fires and to target community education interventions. We then assess the intervention’s impact by comparing the incidence of accidental dwelling fires before and after the Parish Safety Volunteer programme began, as well as between treated and untreated areas, in a difference-in-difference regression. We find that there are greater reductions in accidental dwelling fires in treated areas than in untreated areas, and argue that community education interventions can forge vital networks and increase safety for vulnerable people, as well as build trust and resilience important for disaster and crisis prevention.
What explains which groups are included in a party coalition in any given election cycle? Recent advances in political party theory suggest that policy demanders comprise parties, and that the composition of a party coalition varies from election to election. We theorize three conditions under which parties articulate an interest group’s preferred positions in its quadrennial platform: when groups are ideologically proximate to the party median, when groups display party loyalty, and when groups are flush with resources. Using computer-assisted content analysis on a unique and rich data source, we examine three cycles of testimony that 80 organized groups provided to the Democratic Party. The analysis compares group requests with the content of Democratic and Republican National Committee platforms in 1996, 2000, and 2004. Results show that parties reward loyal groups and those that are ideologically proximate to the party but offer no confirmation of a resource effect.
We often credit disasters, and their coverage in the media, with changes in the public perception of risk associated with low-probability, high-consequence events (LPHCs). With a change in perceptions, we also expect changes in beliefs, preferences, and behaviors. Do beliefs and behaviors change in different ways for people who live through these LPHC critical events, as opposed to people who observe them? This study compares hypothetical hurricanes with actual hurricane effects in a survey quasi-experiment. Findings indicate that hypothetical disasters induce stronger reactions than those experienced in the natural world, as Hurricane Katrina bystanders imagine themselves incurring much higher damages, and being much less likely to return to live in their hurricane-damaged homes, than actual Hurricane Katrina evacuees. Ultimately, respondents considering a hypothetical low-probability, high-consequence event exhibit exaggerated beliefs and opposite decisions of those who actually lived through one of these events. Results underline the importance of examining the differences between public perceptions and experiential reality.
Little is known about how different sources of information drive citizen trust in government. To address that gap this article compares disaster evacuees to observers, noting how trust differs as attention to media coverage increases. First‐hand experience supplies information to update trust through biological and personal processes and performance assessments, while secondary sources provide information about other people's experiences, filtered through lenses that take an active role in crafting information. These two types of information have varying effects depending on the level of government being trusted. Using surveys administered a year after Hurricane Katrina, I find that Katrina evacuees have the highest trust in federal government, until they start paying attention to media coverage, and that attention to coverage has the most dramatic effect on these evacuees compared to all other groups. I also find that increasing attention to second‐hand information corresponds with higher trust in local officials, and that this effect decreases as the level of government increases. It appears media coverage creates a comparison in the mind of hurricane evacuees, causing them to update their performance assessments based on comparing their own experience to that which they observe, thereby updating their political trust.
After several disasters in the United States, the return-migration rate of blacks to post-disaster areas has been lower than that of other races. Does this pattern have a political explanation? I investigate political trust as the causal mechanism through which race affects people’s decisions of where to live after forced evacuation. After accounting for economic, demographic, and sociological influences on return migration, I use mediation analysis to find that political trust acts as a mediator between race and return migration. I am thus able to explain the salience of race to the return-migration decision: race does not have a direct effect on return migration but rather works through the causal mechanism of political trust to determine return-migration decisions. As blacks are more likely to have low levels of political trust, and those with lower political trust are less likely to return, blacks are less likely to return to post-disaster areas.
Field survey experiments often measure amorphous concepts in discretely ordered categories, with postsurvey analytics that fail to account for the discrete attributes of the data. This article demonstrates the use of discrete distribution tests, specifically the chi-square test and the discrete Kolmogorov—Smirnov (KS) test, as simple devices for comparing and analyzing ordered responses typically found in surveys. In Monte Carlo simulations, we find the discrete KS test to have more power than the chi-square test when distributions are right or left skewed, regardless of the sample size or the number of alternatives. The discrete KS test has at least as much power as the chi-square, and sometimes more so, when distributions are bi-modal or approximately uniform and samples are small. After deriving rules of usage for the two tests, we implement them in two cases typical of survey analysis. Using our own data collected after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, we employ our rules to both validate and assess treatment effects in a natural experimental setting.
The topic of nonprofit reform has sparked a debate on the battle between efficiency and effectiveness. Why do ineffective nonprofits survive? Prospective donors favor applicants likely to fulfill donor priorities. Donors with limited time and energy look for signals that reveal recipients' true capabilities. Knowing this, recipients attempt to send the right signals to prospective donors. If the process of sending and reading signals is efficient, funding decisions will tend toward an optimal outcome in which only effective agencies survive. What signals do donors consider the most helpful? Are organizations that send such signals receiving the highest payoffs? What is the financial yield of each signal to recipients? This article uses a signaling game to sharpen our understanding of nonprofit fundraising and derive the conditions under which signals will be credible. Interview and survey evidence gathered in Brazil indicate that signals of accessibility, reliability, and credibility attract the highest payoffs.
Of what relative importance are strategic motivators for bilateral aid donors, and how important is a recipient’s geographic proximity to conflict relative to previously examined economic and political motivators? We find that donors have historically responded to balanced incentives to reduce recipient poverty and further donor political and economic goals. Every bilateral donor conditions aid on conflict. The United States allocates large amounts of development aid to countries bordering a conflict, both pre- and post-Cold War. However, controlling for development levels and donor economic and political interest, most donors reduce aid to a recipient with an in-house or nearby intense conflict.
Media Appearances:
TV Appearances:
Discuss Trump's visit to the UK.
Trump's visit to Japan.
Trump's relations with Iran and North Korea.
Trump's first state visit to the UK.
Trump's first official visit to the UK, protests.
Radio Appearances:
Trump's first state visit to the UK.
Trump's first official visit to the UK.