Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijdrr Risk awareness and intended tsunami evacuation behaviour of international tourists in Kamakura City, Japan Ricardo San Carlos Arce a , Motoharu Onuki a , Miguel Esteban a, ⁎ , Tomoya Shibayama b a The University of Tokyo, Graduate Program in Sustainability Science-Global Leadership Initiative (GPSS-GLI), Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, 5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa City T277-8563, Japan b Waseda University, Dept of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Shinokubo Campus, Building 55, Japan ABSTRACT The present study focuses on analysing the state of the tsunami risk communication strategies, awareness and intended evacuation behaviour amongst tourists in Kamakura City, Japan. A mixed methodologies approach was utilized, using key informant interviews, site surveys and questionnaire surveys to understand the risk awareness of this transient group of the population. The results of the survey showed a relatively high risk awareness and willingness to evacuate, though there was some confusion regarding the direction of evacuation, mode of transportation, and location of evacuation areas in the city. A majority of respondents stated that they would expect to be warned of a threat by an official warning or announcement, whereas a minority mentioned social cues as a way to understand what to do, possibly thus requiring changes to the city's risk management strategies. In Japan, the concept of tendenko has been getting more attention since the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami, which calls for each individual to immediately initiate evacuation by himself or herself, requiring the trust that other members of the family and community will be doing the same. Based on these findings the authors outlined a number of recommendations to improve disaster risk management for the case of tourists visiting Kamakura city. 1. Introduction There is a growing body of literature on evacuation research, though comparatively little of that research has been carried out on tsunami evacuation behaviour. Moreover, studies focusing on evacua- tion behaviour have mostly addressed local residents, creating a gap in research regarding transient population in touristic at-risk locations. The general objective of the present study is to address this gap in knowledge regarding tsunami evacuation behaviour, by considering the subgroup of international tourists as a vulnerable and relevant popula- tion to be targeted in emergency planning initiatives. Specific objec- tives involve assessing the current state of risk communication strate- gies at a tourist destination, with the goal of identifying the different strategies available to local authorities, and evaluate their limitation when attempting to reach the international tourist audience. Additionally, the present work aims to study the level of tsunami risk awareness and intended evacuation behaviour of international tourists, by presenting an hypothetical scenario followed by alternatives on their evacuation decision-making process. The following subsections will outline relevant literature on the subject, including that on evacuation behaviour, risk perception and communication, and evacuation behaviour of tourists, attempting to link it to the objectives of the paper that were just described. 1.1. Evacuation behaviour There has been a growing recognition on the importance of soft measures during tsunami events, as hard measures are no longer considered enough to protect lives [47,58]. The United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) has defined non-structural measures (or “soft measures”) as “any measure not involving physical construction that uses knowledge, practice or agreement to reduce risk and impacts, in particular through policies and laws, public awareness raising, training, and education” [53]. Gwynne et al. [15] noted how by 1999 there was already a tendency to include greater behavioural detail into evacuation simulations [51]. Simulations with agent-based models have been applied to research the evacuation of buildings [22,46,49], improve emergency planning for flooding events [34], hurricane evacuation [17,39,54] and for the analysis of large-scale pedestrian flows during evacuation in a tsunami http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2017.04.005 Received 18 December 2016; Received in revised form 13 April 2017; Accepted 14 April 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: sancarlos.ricardo@gmail.com (R.S.C. Arce), onuki@k.u-tokyo.ac.jp (M. Onuki), esteban.fagan@gmail.com (M. Esteban), Shibayama@waseda.jp (T. Shibayama). International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 23 (2017) 178–192 Available online 18 April 2017 2212-4209/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. MARK