3.1. The Threat of Disasters in Batu City, Indonesia
Based on
Figure 2, the average scoring for the flood susceptibility category in the villages of the Batu Tourism Area across six years (2015 to 2020) showed that the most susceptible village is Bulukerto Village, with a final score of 0.89, and the least susceptible village is Sisir Village, with a final score of 0.79.
Figure 3 shows that the flood susceptibility trend in Batu City during the observation period decreased, although it was still above 0.8 for the index range.
The data processing results of the parameters, as obtained through the ILWIS by weighting parameter values with pairwise comparison, are as follows: slope is 0.457, geomorphology is 0.257, rainfall is 0.570, soil type is 0.09, and land cover is 0.04. Based on the level distribution of landslide susceptibility in
Figure 4, it can be concluded that the village in Batu Tourism Area with the highest level of susceptibility is Mojorejo Village, with a final score of 0.96; meanwhile, the villages with the lowest level are Dadaprejo Village and Pesanggarahan Village, which both had a final score of 0.29.
Based on
Figure 5, landslide susceptibility in Batu decreased during the observation period from 2015 to 2020.
The results of the meteorological drought hazard map in
Figure 6 show that the Batu City Tourism Area has varying levels of drought. Based on these results, it can be concluded that the village most susceptible to meteorological drought in the Batu Tourism Area is Sisir Village, with a final score of 0.98, and the least susceptible villages are Junrejo Village, Ngaglik Village, and Torongrejo Village, which all had a final score of 0.57.
Furthermore,
Figure 7 shows that the susceptibility to drought in Batu City during the observation period of 2015 to 2020 exhibited a decreasing trend. However, in 2016 and 2020, the drought susceptibility index increased.
In terms of land fire susceptibility, from
Figure 8 it can be concluded that the most susceptible village in the Batu Tourism Area is Sisir Village, with a final score of 0.82, and the least susceptible is Sidomulyo Village, which had a final score of 0.56.
According to
Figure 9, the land fire susceptibility in Batu City during the observation period of 2015 to 2020 tended to stagnate at around 0.74, but there was a significant dip in 2018, when the land fire susceptibility index was 0.43. In general, the trend of the land fire susceptibility index in Batu City tended to decrease, although this decrease is not large.
The next disaster to be assessed was the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of positive COVID-19 cases in the Batu Tourism Area increased from April to October 2020. The highest numbers of COVID-19 cases could be found in Sisir Village, Temas Village, and Pesanggarahan Village, while the lowest numbers of COVID-19 cases were in Sumberejo Village and Sumbergondo Village, which each had less than 20 cases. Based on
Figure 10, it can be concluded that the most susceptible village in the Batu Tourism Area to COVID-19 cases is Gunungsari Village, which had a final score of 184, and the least susceptible is Pesanggrahan Village, with a final score of 7.
3.2. Impact of Disaster Threats on Economic Resilience in Batu City, East Java, Indonesia
In the analysis of the panel data, pooled least squares (PLS) modeling was used because, with the N>T data structure (more cross-sectional objects than periods), the PLS model can produce unbiased and consistent parameter estimation results [
27]. The PLS model was added to a regional dummy consisting of the urban village and village groups (with a dummy of 0 for urban villages and 1 for villages). The estimation results of the PLS model in this research are given in
Table 8.
The estimation results shown in
Table 8 were obtained using Equation (10), as follows:
Based on the estimation results of the PLS model without a dummy in
Table 8, five independent variables were shown to significantly affect the local economic vulnerability of Batu in general, namely, the number of rooms filled (NRF), the number of tourists (TOUR), the drought susceptibility index (DROUGHT), the landslide susceptibility index (LANDSLIDE), and the COVID-19 disaster threat index (COVID19). However, in this model without a dummy, it is not possible to know the difference between the effects of each variable on economic vulnerability in Batu City. Therefore, a PLS model was developed with a regional dummy in which it was determined that the urban villages and villages will score 0 and 1, respectively. The regional dummy interacted with the five significant independent variables shown in
Table 9. The estimation results of the PLS model with dummy interactions are as follows.
The estimation results of the PLS model with a dummy for the urban village, as shown in
Table 9, can be written using Equation (11).
The estimation results of the PLS model with a dummy for the village area are modeled with Equation (12):
The basic model of analysis in this study is a model with a robust standard error, namely, the PLS model, which has been discharged from the problems of classical assumptions such as heteroscedasticity and auto-correlation. Based on the model estimation results in
Table 9, two independent variables have a significant effect on local economic vulnerability in urban village areas, namely the landslide susceptibility index variable (LANDSLIDE) and the COVID-19 disaster threat index (COVID19), while other variables were found to have no significant effect. Meanwhile, in village areas, it was found that variables such as the number of rooms filled (NRF), number of tourists (TOUR), drought susceptibility index (DROUGHT), and landslide susceptibility index (LANDSLIDE) have a significant effect.
The positive coefficients in the model estimation results for the landslide susceptibility index (LANDSLIDE) and drought susceptibility index (DROUGHT) indicate that there is a positive relationship between each of these independent variables and the economic vulnerability of Batu City in urban village/village areas. Meanwhile, the negative coefficient of the COVID-19 disaster susceptibility index (COVID19) influenced the economic vulnerability of Batu City, especially in urban villages. Other variables that displayed a negative coefficient were the number of rooms filled (NRF), land fire susceptibility index (LANDFIRE), and flood susceptibility index (FLOOD), indicating that these independent variables negatively impact the economic vulnerability of Batu City. However, the number of tourists (TOUR) has a different influence coefficient for urban villages and villages. Based on the estimation results, the impact of the landslide susceptibility index (LANDSLIDE) on the economic vulnerability of Batu City in urban villages is greater than the impact of the COVID-19 susceptibility index (COVID19). Furthermore, in villages, we find that the impact of the drought susceptibility index (DROUGHT) on the economic vulnerability of Batu City was greater than the impact of the number of rooms filled (NRF), the number of tourists (TOUR), and the landslide susceptibility index (LANDSLIDE).
Most of the population in Batu City work in the agricultural/plantation sector and are supported by the existing tourism potential. Therefore, if landslides and droughts occur, these sectors are the most affected [
28]. Many types of tourism offered by Batu City are natural attractions that are heavily influenced by natural disasters, especially landslides and droughts. Droughts can lead to a serious decrease in the pro-agricultural sector through reductions in land area and output [
29,
30,
31,
32,
33,
34,
35,
36,
37,
38,
39].
The threat of landslides increases the vulnerability of the local economy of Batu City, because landslides result in loss of life and injury to people and livestock, as well as damage to infrastructure, agricultural land, and housing [
40]. The damage and loss of community livelihoods due to landslides can lead to a decrease in and even loss of community income, which can take years to return to normal [
41].
Another disaster that has had a significant impact on the economic vulnerability of Batu City is the COVID-19 pandemic. This is due to the fact that the main sources of income for the Batu City population are agriculture, trading, and tourism. In the context of tourism, one of the responses to the COVID-19 pandemic was the implementation of a lockdown policy, which has implications for all tourism activities in Batu City and causes economic losses in the tourism sector. The implementation of a lockdown, which has been in place since the increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in Indonesia, also worsens the existing conditions. Tourist attractions are able to operate during lockdown by reducing their visitor capacity, or are forced to temporarily close their business locations due to COVID-19 policy restrictions. However, this study finds that an increase in the COVID-19 susceptibility index resulted in a decrease in economic vulnerability. This is presumably because the policies restricting human movement and prohibiting tourist sites from operating can improve the sustainability and environmental conditions of Batu City, allowing the volume of agricultural products from Batu City to increase [
42,
43]. Mousazadeh et al. (2021) [
44] mention that the pandemic also clearly benefited other sectors, which should be considered beneficial progress toward the goal of the global ecosystem’s permanent revival. Lockdown has led to a large reduction in air pollution due to a massive reduction in the burning of fossil fuels, in energy consumption in general [
45], and in the emission of greenhouse gases such as nitrogen dioxide (NO
2), sulfur dioxide (SO
2), and carbon dioxide (CO
2) [
45,
46,
47,
48]. With reduced human activity, noise levels have decreased in many cities around the world [
45,
49,
50,
51,
52].
Most agricultural products are obtained from horticultural crops and grains. Both types of plants are basic household goods, so market selling continues to be carried out despite restrictions on mobility due to the COVID-19 pandemic [
53]. The average trading activities are carried out by micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), and most MSMEs have gone digital [
54]. The Department of Cooperatives, MSMEs, Industry, and Trade in Batu City (2021) stated that around 75 MSMEs in Batu City are experienced in trading digitally, even though as many as 60% of MSMEs in Batu City already have a business identification number (NIB). This allows MSMEs to reach a wider market share, so that their source of income does not depend on market selling to tourists in Batu City. Therefore, environmental capacity and quality are increasing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, causing the COVID-19 susceptibility index to increase, which has reduced the economic vulnerability of Batu City.
Decreased local economic vulnerability in Batu City, especially in village areas, is due to the increase in the number of rooms and the number of tourists, which represents an increase in the number of requests in the tourism sector. This will also have an impact on the value chain rotation in the economic sector, especially tourism commodities originating from agriculture.
The observed field shows that the majority of tourist attractions in the Batu Tourism Area are a form of agrotourism, i.e., tourism activities that utilize the potential of agriculture and plantations (natural panoramas) as tourist objects, including agricultural culture [
55]. The main source of income for the community’s economy is also largely derived from agricultural production activities, so agrotourism is a secondary job.
Other disasters that generally do not significantly affect the economic vulnerability of the Batu City population are also shown by the results of the panel analysis. Flood disasters do not have a significant impact on the economic vulnerability of the Batu City population, even though these disasters often occur in Batu City. The contours of the Batu City area, which has many hills, also contribute to the increased risk of landslides and floods, especially when the level of rainfall is high. These two disasters often occur together, so the community and local government are accustomed to dealing with the impact of such disasters (recovery), ranging from cleaning up the facilities and infrastructure damaged by disasters, to regulating road traffic. Farmers also farm on land where the risk of landslides and floods is relatively low, so these two disasters do not significantly affect the economic vulnerability of the people of Batu City in general.
Forest fires are also relatively common in Batu City. One of the main causes is the conversion of land into horticultural area. In addition, local people often burn garbage indiscriminately, so fires often spread to the forest: a common occurrence in the Batu City area. This type of disaster does not significantly affect the economic vulnerability of the people of Batu City in general, due to the fast handling of forest fires by the government and local communities. This causes fires to be unable to spread, so they do not interfere with agricultural or agrotourism areas.