The social preferences of local citizens and spontaneous volunteerism during disaster relief operations
研究灾害后本地居民的社会偏好如何激励其自发志愿服务，基于行为经济学和社会心理学文献构建理论框架，并用2015年印度金奈洪灾的推特数据验证。
Existing studies on disaster relief operations pay limited attention to acts of spontaneous volunteerism by local citizens in the aftermath of disasters. The purpose of this paper is to explore how social preferences motivate citizens to help during post-disaster situations; above and beyond their own self-regarding interests. The paper begins by synthesising the literature on social preferences from the field of behavioural economics and social psychology with the discourse surrounding behavioural operations management and humanitarian operations management. By doing so, we identify the motivators, enablers and barriers of local citizen response during disaster relief operations. These factors inform a theoretical framework of the social preferences motivating spontaneous volunteerism in post-disaster situations. We evidence facets of the framework using archival and unstructured data retrieved from Twitter feeds generated by local citizens during the floods that hit Chennai, India in 2015. Our model highlights the importance of individual-level action during disaster relief operations and the enabling role of social media as a coordination mechanism for such efforts.