Identifying resilience dimensions and thresholds: evidence from four rural communities in NZ

Community resilience is a critical determinant of how a community can cope with stressors and disturbances, but has proved difficult to conceptualise and measure. This paper uses a resilience framework that suggests resilience is quantifiable, comprises several dimensions and operates with thresholds or ‘tipping points’. A paired-sample case study of four rural communities in New Zealand was used to test the framework. It was found that indicators of resilience in the form of official statistics were not significantly related to communities’ actual perceptions of resilience (overall). Experts were also unable to accurately predict ‘more’ or ‘less’ resilient communities. Communities’ ratings on individual resilience dimensions were only significantly related to overall resilience when summed. These results suggests that the resilience dimensions are compensatory, and ‘the whole is greater than the sum of the parts in the context of community resilience. The findings raise concerns about how to collect data from rural communities regarding their resilience, for making policy decisions.