RSFO - CCRUN - Resilience of small and medium businesses in coastal communities in the New York - New Jersey metropolitan region

DESCRIPTION: The resilience of small and medium businesses to complex events is interconnected with the resilience of whole communities, but the dependencies are only beginning to be studied. The proposed research will explore how complex events have been impacting small and medium businesses, strategies that have improved resilience, barriers to resilience, and opportunities for advancing resilience in two diverse, coastal areas within the New York – New Jersey Metropolitan Region. The study will contribute to ongoing initiatives to build community resilience in the study areas through investigation of resilience challenges and opportunities that are specific to businesses, as well as interdependencies between business resilience, residents, and other components of the community system. The region is exposed to a range of climate hazards, which are overlapping with the devastating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. The study will examine how business resilience challenges and opportunities vary between different policy and regulatory environments, and across a gradient of urbanization, resources, incomes, and racial inequities. The study will focus on year-round and seasonal food service businesses. The team will co-design data collection with business owners and operators and other community partners to ensure that the data supports partners’ efforts to build resilience. The team will conduct: 1) interviews with business owners and operators, leaders of community organizations, elected officials, policy makers, and practitioners; and 2) an exploratory pilot survey of business owners and operators. The team will share study results with business owners and operators and community and public sector decision makers to inform resilience-building opportunities.