Interpersonal trust and disasters: The case of Chile's 2010 earthquake

The latest big earthquake to hit Chile (February 27, 2010), had a magnitude of 8.8 on the Richter scale. Hours later, a tsunami that hit the coasts of Chile ravaging several coastal towns.

International evidence  shows that antisocial behaviour in these circumstances is less common than generally believed.The main reason why looting is not widespread after disasters has to do with the emotional factors involved, particularly those related to altruism and reciprocity behaviours that arise in cases in which family, friends and neighbours are at risk.

Although the evidence is clear, looting did ocur in Concepción not in other places affected by the earthquake. One hypothesis relates to the fact that this city has long been recognized is the one showing the least (or near) levels of social capital in all its forms, including interpersonal trust, in the country.

The context described above prompts the question of whether the spread of the phenomenon of looting and pillaging is related to the low levels of social capital existing in Concepción. We also wanted to learn whether disasters are trust-building instances.

Our main empirical results relate to the correlation between trust and damaged in the province of residence of the respondent. The provinces with higher damage rates show levels of trust that are higher (even controlling by "pre-earthquake" trust ). This might be interpreted as evidence confirming that disasters are an instance for the construction of social capital. As expected, this effect was observed particularly in Metropolitan Region. Concepción seems to have missed the chance to create interpersonal trust with the emergence of episodes of violence and looting. 

Disaster situations may be seen as an opportunity the construction of interpersonal trust. However, these behaviours will emerge only as long as there is a critical mass of social capital, to prevent the generation of unruly behaviours.

In 2012 we might be able to test whether these effects were transitory or permanent.