An Approach to Disaster Management from Home Economics Based on Consumer Education

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The Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake occurred disproving the myth that Japan would be an eternally safe society. With this as a turning-point, it has been becoming more important for people to be awakened to the new significance of disaster prevention to recreate a safety society. The purpose of this study are to analyze what kind of educational steps and what kind of support is necessary in order to promote disaster management activities effectively from the viewpoint of home economics and consumer education.First, we surveyed the present state and problems of consumer awareness of disaster prevention, their disaster prevention activities and disaster prevention education. It became clear that consumer's way of every-day decision making and behavior affects their decision making during a calamity. We concluded that the future education of disaster management needs to promote better consumer understanding of disaster as well as its economic management.Based on these results, we gave home economics lessons for university students on prevention of disasters using consumer education-based methods. By the analysis of the effects of the lesson, the methodology based on consumer education seems effective in providing disaster management education. We, however, found it necessary to solve two problems existing in consumer education and disaster management education ; namely how to teach decision making concretely and how to effectively assist the educators by the creation of a professional association of disaster management. Consumer education and disaster management education are complementary fields : taking advantage of the accumulated knowledge and methods of consumer education, disaster management education will be more effective, while consumer education can benefit from crisis management into view.