ABSTRACT
Some of the elements affecting individual purchase of earthquake insurance include: availability of information both about the earthquake hazard and the existence of insurance; accuracy of estimates of risk; and salience and risk communication. To understand individual response to earthquake hazards, it is important to reconstruct the nexus within which decisions are made and the constraints and enablements that impinge on the individual's decisions. A focus on the earthquake insurance purchase decision involves suspension of attention to other, possibly more significant, aspects of everyday life in California. For households that have owned homes for longer, home equity is likely to make up a large proportion of total household net worth. This situation makes insurance purchase the prudent and conservative mode of protecting household wealth. A great deal of empirical work on risk communication has led to several general conclusions concerning the relationships between the ways that risks are communicated and their salience.
