Labor donation or money donation? Pro-sociality on prevention of natural disasters in a case of cyclone AILA, Bangladesh

The coastal zone in Bangladesh is the most powerfully lethal due to cyclones and storm hazard where 29% of the total population reside. Thus, collective disaster mitigation measures are urgent, and it is important to understand people's pro-social attitude toward such countermeasures. However, few studies on this issue have been conducted in the context of developing countries, such as Bangladesh, and we therefore address this issue. We made a questionnaire survey of 1,000 respondents and elicited (i) a willingness to donate their labor (WDL) and (ii) a willingness to pay (WTP) to collective countermeasures for avoiding the damages from cyclones and associated disasters. With this data, we examine WDL and WTP in relation to respondents' occupation, education and income. The novelty lies in offering respondents an option of choosing WDL and/or WTP in the questionnaire. The study finds that the poor and less educated people are likely to choose WDL and willing to donate more labor, while rich and educated people are likely to choose WTP and willing to donate more money. However, we also find that voluntary labor donation from poor and less educated people is significant in that overall donation from poor and less educated people exceeds that from rich and educated people. Overall, poor and less educated people may be more pro-social and WDL is an important source of contribution to be utilized in natural disaster mitigation of developing countries. This finding can be considered a useful guidance for future policies in more general cases, since it is consistent with observed labor donations for the recovery in the 2011 earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tohoku, Japan.