The impact of Social leadership on psychological Resilience under Natural Environmental Hazards

Many rural areas face significant challenges in managing natural environmental hazards due to their geographical location and limited access to formal disaster management resources. While rural communities often rely on indigenous knowledge and adaptive strategies, their capacity to respond effectively to hazards like droughts and floods can be constrained by socio-economic and infrastructural limitations. Measuring the psychological resilience of rural people against natural environmental hazards including droughts and floods and its predictors was the aim of this research. By reviewing theoretical perspectives explaining psychological resilience against natural environmental hazards, we aim to provide a framework for such a research program. To this end, the Theory of Planned Behavior was reconstructed using hypothesizing new mediated and moderated relationships. The study results were analyzed in two steps by testing two distinctive models with a comparative perspective. “Livelihood-based vulnerability mitigating strategies” and “internet and mass media-based vulnerability mitigating strategies” were used as the moderators of the effects of constructs including normative considerations, self-efficacy, attitude, and social leadership on the psychological resilience against natural environmental hazards in the first and second models, respectively. The results demonstrated that moderating effect of the Internet and mass-media-based strategies in Model 2 is greater than the moderating effect of livelihood-based mitigation strategies on psychological resilience in model 1. By presenting new practical implications and prioritizing the effectiveness of employing two different mitigation strategies, the results of the present study improve the operation of sustainable intervention programs.