Abstract

The purpose of this study is to generate an indigenous psychological theory which explains how people in Taean cope with the disaster caused by the oil spill from Hebei Spirit. Based on a grounded theory, personal in-depth interviews with 32 people in Taean and two focus group interviews were analyzed. Also, to increase the validity of the derived theory, this research adopted a triangulation methodology by applying the grounded theory to personal in-depth interviews that another colleague researcher carried out to different people. As a result, 14 categories, 36 subcategories and 68 concepts were derived to compose a paradigm model. The phenomena in the model comprise ‘change from natural disasters to social ones’, ‘negative effect on physical health’ and ‘negative effect on an ecosystem’. Causal conditions are ‘oil spill’ and ‘failure to take quick copies in the early stage’. Contextual conditions that contribute to phenomena are ‘causes that aggravate situations’ and ‘contextual protection factors’. Action/interaction strategies are classified as ‘automatic/passive copies’ and ‘controlled/active copies’. Intervening conditions that influence action strategies are ‘demographic characteristics’ and ‘individual ability to deal with the disaster’. Consequently, Taean residents experience ‘chronic stress’ or show ‘growth after the disaster’. Finally, to investigate the change in action strategies as time goes on, coding for process was performed. By developing the storyline of phenomena, a core category of ‘a process of adjustment to returning to daily lives, which are different from before the disaster’ was induced. The research findings were discussed by relating to the intervention in the improvement of disaster problems and further researches.