Natural disasters and cooperation under diversity: Evidence from Hurricane Harvey

How does diversity affect cooperation after natural disasters? Drawing on an original survey of Houston-area households and two survey experiments, we find that diversity is associated with lower levels of impersonal cooperation-beyond family and friends-before natural disasters and with lower cooperation both before and after disasters. In affected areas, households in more diverse tracts report receiving less help and express lower support for recovery policies. In a policy experiment, affected respondents typically favor more costly recovery measures, but this preference weakens in high-diversity areas. A second experiment uncovers strong post-disaster ingroup biases along partisan and religious lines, while shared membership in civic associations emerges as a critical facilitator of cooperation in diverse settings. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that diversity can impede post-disaster cooperation and illuminate how social identities shape cooperation and recovery efforts.