Ashley D Ro
Biographic Data
| ID | 3700349 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ashley D Ro |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ashley D |
| FAMILY NAME | Ro |
| SIGNATURE | RO A D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Texas A&M University at Galveston |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8415-3383 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 86 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
From allocation to action
The Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program is the primary federal mechanism for financing long-term housing recovery after major U.S. disasters, yet expenditures often lag years behind disaster events. This study examines how administrative processes influence CDBG-DR implementation following the 2017 disasters in Texas, Florida, and California. Using a comparative case study design, the analysis draws on state Acti…
Norm Neutralization and Climate Inaction
Although climate change understanding and concern have grown in recent years among the U.S. public, Americans remain divided about climate action. This paradox reflects the barriers in translating concern to behavior and underscores a need to explore the cognitive mechanisms inhibiting climate action. To this end, we examined how individuals apply psychological techniques, namely denial of responsibility, denial of injury, denial of victim, conde…
Validation and Application of a Perception of Community Adaptive Capacity to Coastal Hazards Measure
Evaluating adaptive capacities that support the resilience of at-risk communities can be from an objective (top-down) approach or from a subjective (bottom-up) approach. While both approaches are valuable, there remains a need for quantitative subjective measures that complement objective measures by grounding understanding in community members’ perceptions and experiences. To address this need, a 12-item self-report assessment scale of community…
Who Is Perceived as Deserving? How Social Identities Shape Attitudes about Disaster Assistance in the United States
Research has shown that as the size of government assistance programs grow, and the recipients of such programs are increasingly non-white and/or non-citizen, public support for them declines. Our study examines this phenomenon on the question of deservingness in federal disaster assistance. Using a 2018 survey experiment that leverages two devastating hurricanes—Hurricane Maria and Hurricane Harvey—that hit different parts of the United States i…
Effects of temporal framing and hazard experience on receptivity to hurricane risk messages
Introduction As knowledge in the scientific community increases regarding how anthropogenic CO 2 loading of the atmosphere will impact future hurricane activity, the need for effective and accurate communication of hurricane risk in coastal communities—specifically to non-scientific stakeholders—also increases. Methods To better inform hurricane risk communication, this study employs a survey of U.S. Gulf Coast residents immediately following the…
Climate change impacts on infrastructure
The Dimensions of Individual Support for Coastal Hazard Mitigation
Although it is largely accepted that disasters offer windows of opportunity for adoption of risk-reduction measures, the dimensions of support for hazard mitigation following a disaster are not well understood. Drawing on a survey of Upper Texas Coast residents 9 months after Hurricane Harvey (2017), this study explores public support for various types of hazard mitigation within the context of a natural hazard focusing event. Regression models e…
Social capital and institutional complexity in Svalbard
Purpose Resilience can be understood as the ability of communities to adapt to disturbances in a way that reduces chronic vulnerability and promotes growth. Disaster scholars assert that resilience is developed through a set of adaptive capacities across multiple domains, including society, the economy, the built and natural environments, and sociopolitical institutions. These adaptive capacities have been thought to be networked, but little is k…
(Young) Generations as Social Identities
Multi-scalar and multi-dimensional conceptions of social capital and mental health impacts after disaster
While much research investigates how social capital relates to mental health after disasters, less work employs a multi-scalar, multi-dimensional social capital framework. This study applies such a construct to an analysis of novel survey data of approximately 1,000 rural and urban Texans after Hurricane Harvey struck the United States in August 2017. On the individual level, it finds that greater social support is linked to fewer mental health i…
Mapping cross-scale economic impacts of storm surge events
Cartographic display of cross-scale phenomena and user-centered design are considered through a discussion of the development of an interactive web map depicting local-to-national economic impacts of hurricane storm surge events in Galveston Bay, Texas. Map development and design (as informed by stakeholder focus groups) is described, including approaches to presenting complex, cross-scale impacts of surge events across multiple years and scenari…
Factors Associated with Food Insecurity Following Hurricane Harvey in Texas
Food insecurity prevalence among disaster-affected households has been found to be higher than state prevalence in non-disaster times. This study applies a socio-ecological model of post-disaster food insecurity to a nested quota sample ( n = 1002) recruited for a web survey from 41 Texas counties affected by Hurricane Harvey 12-15 months post-event. This analysis identifies risk and protective factors for food insecurity. Chi-square analysis was…
Determinants of Hurricane Evacuation from a Large Representative Sample of the U.S. Gulf Coast
Exposure to natural disasters like hurricanes negatively impacts the mental and physical health of populations, and evacuation is an important step taken to prevent these adverse health events. This study uses data from a large representative sample of U.S. Gulf Coast residents to explore the determinants of hurricane evacuation. In December 2017, data were collected from 3030 residents of the U.S. Gulf Coast, including Texas, Louisiana, Mississi…
Polarization of Climate Change Beliefs
Objective This article explores how the Millennial Generation identity—the shared values and experiences of young adults (born between 1980 and 1997)—affects political polarization of climate change belief, specifically how it mediates the relationship between party affiliation and educational attainment. Method To test this, an interaction between Millennial*Republican*education is estimated, using data from an original national survey administe…
Expanding Social Science Through Disaster Studies
Objectives This article provides an overview of how the interdisciplinary field of disaster studies contributes to the social sciences. Methods The following themes are explored in relation to the articles contained in the special issue: disasters are social and political phenomena that generate policy change, disasters reflect and affect democratic governance, and disasters reveal shared experience and collective identity. Results Disaster studi…
The Politics of Millennials
Today the Millennial generation, the cohort born from the early 1980s to the late 1990s, is the largest generation in the United States. It exceeds one-quarter of the population and is the most diverse generation in U.S. history. Millennials grew up experiencing September 11, the global proliferation of the Internet and of smart phones, and the worst economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Their young adulthood has been marked…
Science as a Public Good
On April 22, 2017, millions of people marched for science in response to a growing sense of urgency for preserving scientific funding and knowledge, both perceived as threatened by the Trump administration. This research note highlights data collected at three marches: Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles, California; and Austin, Texas. We examine marcher motivations for participation, finding the environment, current administration, and science funding…
Economic Uncertainty, Job Threat, and the Resiliency of the Millennial Generation's Attitudes Toward Immigration
Objective Drawing a distinction between conditional and prevalence factors that affect immigration attitudes, we examine if the recent economic recession has influenced the Millennial Generation's attitudes about immigration, compared to non‐Millennials. Methods Employing data from the 2008 American National Election Study (ANES), we conduct a logit analysis to estimate the effects of theoretically relevant factors on immigration attitudes. Resul…
Does Decentralization Improve Perceptions of Accountability? Attitudinal Evidence from Colombia
Decentralization is argued to create incentives for local and regional politicians to be more responsive and accountable to their constituents, but few studies have directly tested this claim. We use survey data from Colombia to examine individual‐level evaluations of the degree to which decentralization prompts citizens to view department government as more accountable. We estimate the effect of administrative, fiscal, and political decentraliza…
Local Disaster Resilience
Since 2000, the Gulf Coast states – Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida – have experienced a series of hurricanes, multiple floods and severe storms, and one oil spill. These disasters have not only been numerous but also devastating. Response to and recovery from these unprecedented disasters has been fraught with missteps in management. In efforts to avoid similar failures in the future, government agencies and policy practition…
Can Formal Rules of Order be Used as an Accurate Proxy for Behaviour Internal to a Legislature? Evidence from Costa Rica
Scholars rely heavily on formal rules to classify legislatures, but parchment institutions may only tell part of the story about how the chamber works. Behind-the-scenes behaviour may counter-balance or temper the power distribution created by formal rules. To begin examining if formal rules are an accurate predictor of actual behaviour, we analyse standing committees in Costa Rica's Legislative Assembly. We find that despite the formal instituti…
The price of personalizing politics
Latino Representation and Education
The rapid growth of the Latino population in the U.S. over the past 15 years has led to a significant increase in levels of primary and secondary school enrollment rates of Latino children. Research on Latino education has demonstrated the institutional and contextual challenges faced by this increasingly significant group, but studies that link Latino representation and Latino educational performance have neglected to sort out the direct and ind…
Does Decentralization Improve Perceptions of Accountability? Attitudinal Evidence from Colombia
Decentralization is argued to create incentives for local and regional politicians to be more responsive and accountable to their constituents, but few studies have directly tested this claim. We use survey data from Colombia to examine individual‐level evaluations of the degree to which decentralization prompts citizens to view department government as more accountable. We estimate the effect of administrative, fiscal, and political decentraliza…
(Young) Generations as Social Identities
Polarization of Climate Change Beliefs
Objective This article explores how the Millennial Generation identity—the shared values and experiences of young adults (born between 1980 and 1997)—affects political polarization of climate change belief, specifically how it mediates the relationship between party affiliation and educational attainment. Method To test this, an interaction between Millennial*Republican*education is estimated, using data from an original national survey administe…
Economic Uncertainty, Job Threat, and the Resiliency of the Millennial Generation's Attitudes Toward Immigration
Objective Drawing a distinction between conditional and prevalence factors that affect immigration attitudes, we examine if the recent economic recession has influenced the Millennial Generation's attitudes about immigration, compared to non‐Millennials. Methods Employing data from the 2008 American National Election Study (ANES), we conduct a logit analysis to estimate the effects of theoretically relevant factors on immigration attitudes. Resul…
Expanding Social Science Through Disaster Studies
Objectives This article provides an overview of how the interdisciplinary field of disaster studies contributes to the social sciences. Methods The following themes are explored in relation to the articles contained in the special issue: disasters are social and political phenomena that generate policy change, disasters reflect and affect democratic governance, and disasters reveal shared experience and collective identity. Results Disaster studi…
The price of personalizing politics
Science as a Public Good
On April 22, 2017, millions of people marched for science in response to a growing sense of urgency for preserving scientific funding and knowledge, both perceived as threatened by the Trump administration. This research note highlights data collected at three marches: Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles, California; and Austin, Texas. We examine marcher motivations for participation, finding the environment, current administration, and science funding…
Can Formal Rules of Order be Used as an Accurate Proxy for Behaviour Internal to a Legislature? Evidence from Costa Rica
Scholars rely heavily on formal rules to classify legislatures, but parchment institutions may only tell part of the story about how the chamber works. Behind-the-scenes behaviour may counter-balance or temper the power distribution created by formal rules. To begin examining if formal rules are an accurate predictor of actual behaviour, we analyse standing committees in Costa Rica's Legislative Assembly. We find that despite the formal instituti…
Latino Representation and Education
The rapid growth of the Latino population in the U.S. over the past 15 years has led to a significant increase in levels of primary and secondary school enrollment rates of Latino children. Research on Latino education has demonstrated the institutional and contextual challenges faced by this increasingly significant group, but studies that link Latino representation and Latino educational performance have neglected to sort out the direct and ind…
Multi-scalar and multi-dimensional conceptions of social capital and mental health impacts after disaster
While much research investigates how social capital relates to mental health after disasters, less work employs a multi-scalar, multi-dimensional social capital framework. This study applies such a construct to an analysis of novel survey data of approximately 1,000 rural and urban Texans after Hurricane Harvey struck the United States in August 2017. On the individual level, it finds that greater social support is linked to fewer mental health i…
Latino Representation and Education
The rapid growth of the Latino population in the U.S. over the past 15 years has led to a significant increase in levels of primary and secondary school enrollment rates of Latino children. Research on Latino education has demonstrated the institutional and contextual challenges faced by this increasingly significant group, but studies that link Latino representation and Latino educational performance have neglected to sort out the direct and ind…
Can Formal Rules of Order be Used as an Accurate Proxy for Behaviour Internal to a Legislature? Evidence from Costa Rica
Scholars rely heavily on formal rules to classify legislatures, but parchment institutions may only tell part of the story about how the chamber works. Behind-the-scenes behaviour may counter-balance or temper the power distribution created by formal rules. To begin examining if formal rules are an accurate predictor of actual behaviour, we analyse standing committees in Costa Rica's Legislative Assembly. We find that despite the formal instituti…
The price of personalizing politics
Local Disaster Resilience
Since 2000, the Gulf Coast states – Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida – have experienced a series of hurricanes, multiple floods and severe storms, and one oil spill. These disasters have not only been numerous but also devastating. Response to and recovery from these unprecedented disasters has been fraught with missteps in management. In efforts to avoid similar failures in the future, government agencies and policy practition…
Does Decentralization Improve Perceptions of Accountability? Attitudinal Evidence from Colombia
Decentralization is argued to create incentives for local and regional politicians to be more responsive and accountable to their constituents, but few studies have directly tested this claim. We use survey data from Colombia to examine individual‐level evaluations of the degree to which decentralization prompts citizens to view department government as more accountable. We estimate the effect of administrative, fiscal, and political decentraliza…
Economic Uncertainty, Job Threat, and the Resiliency of the Millennial Generation's Attitudes Toward Immigration
Objective Drawing a distinction between conditional and prevalence factors that affect immigration attitudes, we examine if the recent economic recession has influenced the Millennial Generation's attitudes about immigration, compared to non‐Millennials. Methods Employing data from the 2008 American National Election Study (ANES), we conduct a logit analysis to estimate the effects of theoretically relevant factors on immigration attitudes. Resul…
The Politics of Millennials
Today the Millennial generation, the cohort born from the early 1980s to the late 1990s, is the largest generation in the United States. It exceeds one-quarter of the population and is the most diverse generation in U.S. history. Millennials grew up experiencing September 11, the global proliferation of the Internet and of smart phones, and the worst economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Their young adulthood has been marked…
Science as a Public Good
On April 22, 2017, millions of people marched for science in response to a growing sense of urgency for preserving scientific funding and knowledge, both perceived as threatened by the Trump administration. This research note highlights data collected at three marches: Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles, California; and Austin, Texas. We examine marcher motivations for participation, finding the environment, current administration, and science funding…
Determinants of Hurricane Evacuation from a Large Representative Sample of the U.S. Gulf Coast
Exposure to natural disasters like hurricanes negatively impacts the mental and physical health of populations, and evacuation is an important step taken to prevent these adverse health events. This study uses data from a large representative sample of U.S. Gulf Coast residents to explore the determinants of hurricane evacuation. In December 2017, data were collected from 3030 residents of the U.S. Gulf Coast, including Texas, Louisiana, Mississi…
Polarization of Climate Change Beliefs
Objective This article explores how the Millennial Generation identity—the shared values and experiences of young adults (born between 1980 and 1997)—affects political polarization of climate change belief, specifically how it mediates the relationship between party affiliation and educational attainment. Method To test this, an interaction between Millennial*Republican*education is estimated, using data from an original national survey administe…
Expanding Social Science Through Disaster Studies
Objectives This article provides an overview of how the interdisciplinary field of disaster studies contributes to the social sciences. Methods The following themes are explored in relation to the articles contained in the special issue: disasters are social and political phenomena that generate policy change, disasters reflect and affect democratic governance, and disasters reveal shared experience and collective identity. Results Disaster studi…
Factors Associated with Food Insecurity Following Hurricane Harvey in Texas
Food insecurity prevalence among disaster-affected households has been found to be higher than state prevalence in non-disaster times. This study applies a socio-ecological model of post-disaster food insecurity to a nested quota sample ( n = 1002) recruited for a web survey from 41 Texas counties affected by Hurricane Harvey 12-15 months post-event. This analysis identifies risk and protective factors for food insecurity. Chi-square analysis was…
Mapping cross-scale economic impacts of storm surge events
Cartographic display of cross-scale phenomena and user-centered design are considered through a discussion of the development of an interactive web map depicting local-to-national economic impacts of hurricane storm surge events in Galveston Bay, Texas. Map development and design (as informed by stakeholder focus groups) is described, including approaches to presenting complex, cross-scale impacts of surge events across multiple years and scenari…
Effects of temporal framing and hazard experience on receptivity to hurricane risk messages
Introduction As knowledge in the scientific community increases regarding how anthropogenic CO 2 loading of the atmosphere will impact future hurricane activity, the need for effective and accurate communication of hurricane risk in coastal communities—specifically to non-scientific stakeholders—also increases. Methods To better inform hurricane risk communication, this study employs a survey of U.S. Gulf Coast residents immediately following the…
Climate change impacts on infrastructure
The Dimensions of Individual Support for Coastal Hazard Mitigation
Although it is largely accepted that disasters offer windows of opportunity for adoption of risk-reduction measures, the dimensions of support for hazard mitigation following a disaster are not well understood. Drawing on a survey of Upper Texas Coast residents 9 months after Hurricane Harvey (2017), this study explores public support for various types of hazard mitigation within the context of a natural hazard focusing event. Regression models e…
Social capital and institutional complexity in Svalbard
Purpose Resilience can be understood as the ability of communities to adapt to disturbances in a way that reduces chronic vulnerability and promotes growth. Disaster scholars assert that resilience is developed through a set of adaptive capacities across multiple domains, including society, the economy, the built and natural environments, and sociopolitical institutions. These adaptive capacities have been thought to be networked, but little is k…
(Young) Generations as Social Identities
Multi-scalar and multi-dimensional conceptions of social capital and mental health impacts after disaster
While much research investigates how social capital relates to mental health after disasters, less work employs a multi-scalar, multi-dimensional social capital framework. This study applies such a construct to an analysis of novel survey data of approximately 1,000 rural and urban Texans after Hurricane Harvey struck the United States in August 2017. On the individual level, it finds that greater social support is linked to fewer mental health i…
Validation and Application of a Perception of Community Adaptive Capacity to Coastal Hazards Measure
Evaluating adaptive capacities that support the resilience of at-risk communities can be from an objective (top-down) approach or from a subjective (bottom-up) approach. While both approaches are valuable, there remains a need for quantitative subjective measures that complement objective measures by grounding understanding in community members’ perceptions and experiences. To address this need, a 12-item self-report assessment scale of community…
Who Is Perceived as Deserving? How Social Identities Shape Attitudes about Disaster Assistance in the United States
Research has shown that as the size of government assistance programs grow, and the recipients of such programs are increasingly non-white and/or non-citizen, public support for them declines. Our study examines this phenomenon on the question of deservingness in federal disaster assistance. Using a 2018 survey experiment that leverages two devastating hurricanes—Hurricane Maria and Hurricane Harvey—that hit different parts of the United States i…
From allocation to action
The Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program is the primary federal mechanism for financing long-term housing recovery after major U.S. disasters, yet expenditures often lag years behind disaster events. This study examines how administrative processes influence CDBG-DR implementation following the 2017 disasters in Texas, Florida, and California. Using a comparative case study design, the analysis draws on state Acti…
Norm Neutralization and Climate Inaction
Although climate change understanding and concern have grown in recent years among the U.S. public, Americans remain divided about climate action. This paradox reflects the barriers in translating concern to behavior and underscores a need to explore the cognitive mechanisms inhibiting climate action. To this end, we examined how individuals apply psychological techniques, namely denial of responsibility, denial of injury, denial of victim, conde…
Political science (15 works) · Disaster Management and Resilience (12 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Geography (10 works) · Economics (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Politics (8 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Climate change (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works)