Social Network and Community Participation in the Process of Post-disaster Recovery: Based on Survey Data Gathered after Ya'an Earthquake

Social network is a critically important factor for the degree of community Participation in post-disaster recovery. This paper conducts a field survey to investigate how social network is related to the degree of community participation. It was found that villagers' self-organized network has positive influence on their voluntary community activities. On the contrary, those who have a dense and intimate network with local government prefer government-organized activities to voluntary community activities. Therefore, the network with local government is significantly negatively associated to self-organization in the villages. Additionally, these two groups of participants (in self- or government-organized activities) do not overlap. It suggests that related government departments should focus more on the cultivation of villagers' social network and social capital in post-disaster recovery. These results help better understandings of not only the influence of the social network on post-disaster recovery, but also the role of the local government in reconstruction activities.