When disaster occur, people are subjected to make continuous decisions and to perform prompt activities along with the emergency situation in order to save lives and properties. In the course of decision making for efficient disaster management, numerous stakeholders such as central and local government, the defected, citizen, NGOs, enterprises, and so on are likely to attempt to reflect their own concerns and informations. However, these individualistic efforts may result in the inefficiencies in disaster management largely due to the differences in informations.
Based upon the theory of markets with asymmetric information, this study attempts to explain the problems of asymmetric information under the light of disaster management. From the perspectives of market failure and government failure caused by information imperfection, the study elaborates attempts to re-interpret, under the light of asymmetric information, the causes raised by major problems in disaster mana- gement, viz. i) lack of preventive investment by the primary management groups, ii) lack of public safety services in the damaged or vulnerable areas, iii) increase of malpractices associated with disaster recovery projects.
As the rational approaches to the problem of symmetric information in disaster management, the study suggests the following recommen- dations: 1) it would be necessary to develop the tasks for information scanning as well as dissemination and to activate the investment to these sectors, and 2) it is required to launch regional offices which mediate, monitor and assess the recovery projects.