Endurance or decline of emergent groups following a flood disaster: implications for community resilience

Previous social psychological research has shown that new group relationships can emerge among disaster survivors due to a shared sense of common fate, facilitating the provision of social support and collective coordination. Emergent groups and the support they mobilize over time can be crucial for the recovery period and overall community resilience, but such communities decline over time. What is not known are the psychological group processes that might contribute to or mitigate this decline. In this interview study with 19 flood-affected residents from the city of York, UK, conducted 15 months after the 2015 floods, we explored the factors that affected the decline or persistence of emergent groups in a post-flood community. Through a theoretical thematic analysis, we show how emergent groups can decline due to a lack of common fate, post-flood identity shifts, or perceived inequality. However, we also show that a sense of togetherness can be maintained through past shared adversity, due to the persistence of secondary stressors, intentional collective acts such as commemorations, and through the ongoing provision of social support. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.