Humanitarian Logistics Factors and Their Effects on Social Cost in the Context of a Slow-Onset Disaster.

Abstract

The prolonged drought in the Coquimbo Region has transformed rural water distribution via water tanker trucks into an ongoing humanitarian operation. This paper presents research progress aimed at explaining how operational reliability, distributive equity, vulnerability, and resilience relate to water access insecurity, water deprivation costs, and household impact. A PLS-SEM model was estimated with a 79% valid survey response rate. The measurement model demonstrated satisfactory internal consistency and convergent validity. Preliminary results indicate that reliability and equity reduce insecurity, whereas vulnerability increases it. Insecurity manifests primarily in temporal, sacrifice, psychosocial, and monetary costs. Resilience directly reduces both insecurity and household impact, while specifically buffering the conversion of insecurity into psychosocial costs. The model explains 61.5% of the variance in household impact. However, exact fit tests and predictive comparison with a linear model suggest maintaining a provisional interpretation and refining the model specification with the full sample.