Disaster volunteers play a vital role across the continuum of disaster management, including preparedness, emergency response and recovery. Research on volunteerism in disaster contexts has been documented since the 1950s, and the field has continued to develop, reflecting sustained scholarly attention to volunteers’ roles across different phases of disaster management (Johansson 2024). In many disaster settings, volunteers are among the earliest responders, providing logistical assistance, psychosocial support and other forms of practical help under conditions of uncertainty, urgency and prolonged disruption (Hinsch & Douglas 2024; Kirac, Shaltayev & Wood 2024). As part of the helping workforce, disaster volunteers may face a range of mental health risks, including post-traumatic stress symptoms, anxiety, depression and other forms of psychological distress (Hamblen, Barnett & Norris 2012; Santucci 2012; Shakespeare-Finch & Scully 2009). However, although the burdens experienced by responders have been widely acknowledged, less attention has been given to how disaster volunteer resilience is conceptualised and sustained, particularly among affiliated volunteers working within established humanitarian organisations (Kesgin & Durmuş 2022). This issue is particularly relevant in climate-vulnerable coastal settings, where disaster response often takes place under recurrent and prolonged adversity (Islam et al. 2021; Sengupta 2023). International research on climate change impacts in coastal areas has grown rapidly, with increasing attention to hydrometeorological hazards such as tidal flooding, land subsidence and repeated inundation (Laino & Iglesias 2023; Mohan, Kumari & Kaushik 2024). Coastal floods in low-lying areas can produce cumulative ecological, social and economic disruption over time (Diem, Minh & Diep 2015; Swarnokar et al. 2025; Thi Phuong et al. 2023). Indonesia is a country consisting of thousands of islands, with the second longest coastline in the world. In addition, its tropical climate gives rise to the threat of flooding because of high rainfall and subsidence that results in tidal floods. Many areas in Indonesia are vulnerable to flooding in coastal areas, such as Jakarta (Bennett et al. 2023), Semarang and Demak in Central Java (Iswari, Prabowo & Yulianto 2025; Wurjanto, Mukhti & Wirasti 2017), Banyuasin District in Sumatra (Hamdani et al. 2014) and Mataram in Lombok (Rahadiati, Munawaroh & Suryanegara 2021). In Central Java, floods have serious implications for the community’s livelihood and environmental security, including damage to agricultural and food security (Suryanto et al. 2023). Severe flooding in coastal areas of national spiked a national concern, citing that the February-March 2024 Demak Regency, Central Java, recorded as the worst flood in the last 30 years. This flood caused economic losses of more than IDR 2.049 trillion, affecting 13 from 14 subdistricts and causing over 56 000 victims (BPBD Kabupaten Demak 2024). In the flood response effort, the Indonesian Red Cross (PMI) Demak Branch assigned more than 100 personnel. The assistance provided is related to logistics distribution, public kitchens, water and sanitation and health services. More than 50 volunteers were assigned in turn to serve the needs of around 5000 packages per day plus other services (Dinas Komunikasi dan Informatika Kabupaten Demak 2024). In response, records were found on the coordination of assigned volunteers and the psychosocial support of volunteers on duty, which still need to be improved. This shows that we need to improve how volunteers are managed and make sure mental health support is included in plans for dealing with disasters. Volunteer participation in disaster management takes place over a wide spectrum in all pre-disaster risk reduction and post-disaster response and recovery activities. Affiliated disaster volunteers are those who are involved voluntarily in disaster efforts under the umbrella of a charity organisation such as the Red Cross Movement (International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement), UN agencies, International non-governmental organisation (NGO) and Public Institutions (Kesgin & Durmuş 2022). As the world’s attention to disasters increases, the mental health aspects of the helpers involved in them are also increasing. Volunteers are part of the helpers who are at risk of facing various mental health problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety and substance use disorder (Hamblen et al. 2012; Santucci 2012; Shakespeare-Finch & Scully 2009). Various mental health risks among volunteers require attention and structured support, but attention to volunteer resilience is still limited compared to reactive interventions (Dewi et al. 2025b). The present study focused on volunteers, unpaid individuals affiliated with non-governmental organisations engaged in disaster management, who dedicate their time and energy to helping others during climate change disasters in the coastal context.

The integrated findings of mixed method data were presented in Table 3. Table 3 comprises volunteer resilience level and qualitative themes that were joined through analysis of convergence, expansion and discordance.

Exploring disaster volunteer resilience in coastal areas is essential for enhancing their motivation, knowledge and skills to counteract the negative impact of mental problems during involvement in disasters as well as improving disaster mitigation. This mixed methods study explores resiliency using a multisystem that combines internal and external perspectives at the coastal context of low-county and middle-county prone to disaster. This study has two main goals: To quantitatively assess volunteer resilience using the adapted Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale and to qualitatively explore the factors contributing to disaster volunteer resilience, specifically in a rural–peri-urban coastal district of Central Java, Indonesia, following the 2024 Demak floods. Moderate levels of resilience were reported across the five dimensions, specifically in the personal competence and internal trust dimensions record higher mean scores than the others. The qualitative findings further explicate how this multisystem resilience is enacted in practice, consistent with previous Indonesian disaster volunteer resilience study (Dewi et al. 2025a). The five themes, ‘volunteer competencies, spirituality, culture, emotional support, and functional support’, indicate that disaster volunteer resilience is better understood as a multisystem capacity embedded in everyday collective or communal relationships with families, organisations and communities rather than as an individual trait alone (Connor & Davidson 2003; Sanson & Masten 2024; Ungar et al. 2021a). These findings align with prior research showing that volunteer resilience emerges from the interaction of individual, environmental and organisational (Ghodsi et al. 2020). However, this study provides evidence that is context specific on the factors that are expressed among affiliated volunteers responding to a recurrent coastal flood disaster in Central Java. In a recent review, Ghodsi et al. (2020) found limited studies on volunteer resilience, most of which focused on humanitarian workers as well as expatriate professionals in high-income contexts. The latest review has similarly noted that disaster volunteer resilience remains underexplored, particularly in non-Western and low- and middle-income settings. By contrast, this study contributes to an emerging body of research in Southeast Asia, showing how spiritual commitment, family consent and collective values help sustain volunteer motivation (Arianti et al. 2025; Ruslanjari et al. 2024). Though contexts differ which Demak’s tidal floods are slow-onset and recurring, unlike sudden earthquakes, volunteers in both settings drew on relational and moral resources to interpret their roles and regulate emotional strain. Personal competence emerged as a particularly salient resilience resource in both quantitative and qualitative studies. In the quantitative findings, this dimension showed relatively stronger prominence; in the qualitative accounts, competence was expressed through technical preparedness, active communication and stress management during deployment. This suggests that competence in disaster volunteering is not only a matter of confidence or task mastery but also of maintaining communication, managing emotional strain and learning from field experience. This interpretation is consistent with the literature, suggesting that adaptive capacity develops through experiential learning, mentoring and reflective practice rather than being fixed as an individual trait (Liu, Reed & Fung 2020; Masten 2021; Southwick et al. 2014). This finding is also compatible with Masten’s view of resilience as ‘ordinary magic’, in which adaptation is supported by ordinary protective systems and with later multisystem perspectives that locate resilience across interacting individual, relational and community systems (Masten 2001, 2014). In this study, individual resilience capacities such as personal competence and internal trust were enhanced by external support. This relational perspective is also reflected in recent ecological and multisystem models of resilience (Ungar 2021; Ungar et al. 2021a). In this sense, resilience is not best understood as a fixed property of the volunteer, but as a context-sensitive capacity supported by the alignment of internal strengths and surrounding systems (Liu et al. 2020). Emotional support, especially from family members, was another important contributing factor. In this study, emotional support took the form of empathic listening, permission, understanding and practical assistance from relatives. These findings suggest that resilience among affiliated volunteers is not only a matter of individual emotional regulation but also of relational regulation, in which family members help volunteers manage stress, sustain participation and negotiate role demands. A relational well-being lens discusses the emergence of family and organisational supports (White & Jha 2023). Material provisions, including meals and equipment, interacted with relational care (e.g. relatives’ attentiveness, peer support) and cultural narratives to foster a sense of purpose. For women, negotiated domestic arrangements facilitated participation in high-risk assignments without affecting family duties. These relational factors retained dignity, purpose and motivation at prolonged deployments, suggesting that resilience was collectively generated through close family and social interactions (Boon et al. 2012; Southwick et al. 2014).

Two themes that extended the quantitative profile were cultural value and spirituality. Cultural values such as ‘ngopeni lan ngrumati’ [mutual care], togetherness and solidarity emerged as important resilience resources even though they were not directly represented in the quantitative indicators. This corresponds to research from Southeast Asia that conceptualises disaster coping as relational and spiritually integrated (Hechanova & Waelde 2017). Our research underscores that, for Javanese volunteers, resilience encompasses the fulfilment of collective responsibilities grounded in cultural and religious contexts. Spirituality was a major source of meaning-making (Pargament & Mahoney 2016). Volunteers regarded their activities as ibadah [worship], and the Javanese term lilo legowo [sincere acceptance] facilitated their perception of pain as a moral obligation. In this instance, spirituality functioned as more than a private coping mechanisms; it was relational, with families, organisations and cultural narratives together fostering a collective comprehension of sacrifice and service (Hakkim & Deb 2022; Sato et al. 2022). The mixed methods design was particularly important because it showed that several resilience resources central to volunteers’ adaptation were only partially captured, or not captured at all, by individual-level quantitative indicators. In this study, the adapted CD-RISC was useful for describing resilience levels and identifying participants with relatively high resilience scores. However, the qualitative findings showed that some important contributing factors, especially cultural values, family-based emotional support and organisational functional support, became more visible only when resilience was explored in context. This is consistent with arguments that resilience measurement is closely tied to how resilience is conceptualised, and that individual-level scales may not fully capture broader socio-ecological sources of adaptation (Liu et al. 2020; Windle 2011). Accordingly, the present study demonstrates the value of interpreting resilience scores alongside qualitative accounts of the broader social ecology in which resilience is sustained. The practical implications are reflected through functional support that emerged as a theme in this study, including team-based collaboration, facilitation of volunteers’ needs during deployment, guidance from mentors and post-assignment evaluation. These supports were described as helping volunteers remain effective, feel cared for and continue their engagement during prolonged disaster response. Previous studies likewise show that organisational factors such as role clarity, preparation, training, assigned tasks and support are closely related to volunteer mental health and resilience (Asrofi, Giyarsih & Hadmoko 2024; Thormar et al. 2013). During the 2024 response, over 100 PMI Demak personnel were deployed, with volunteers providing food, medical and psychosocial services to affected communities. Yet spontaneous arrivals and limited coordination created stress for both volunteers and staff. Previous studies have noted similar barriers in disaster-prone regions, including organisational capacity constraints and insufficient preparedness (Asrofi et al. 2024; Dinas Komunikasi dan Informatika Kabupaten Demak 2024). Strengthening institutional systems for volunteer management, including preparation, psychosocial debriefing and family-informed protocols that remain a priority. A key strength of this study lies in its sequential explanatory mixed methods design, which enabled an integrated examination of disaster volunteer resilience through both quantitative measurement and qualitative exploration. The near-census quantitative sample enhanced the descriptive robustness of the resilience profile, while the inclusion of volunteers, family members and organisational staff in the qualitative phase allowed for multisystem triangulation of resilience processes. The use of a joint-display technique further strengthened analytic integration by explicitly linking quantitative indicators with qualitative themes.

This study found that volunteers involved in the 2024 Demak flood response generally demonstrated moderate levels of resilience, with personal competence and internal trust emerging as relatively stronger domains in the CD-RISC profile. The thematic analysis further showed that disaster volunteer resilience in this recurrent coastal flood context was sustained through five interrelated themes: Personal competence, spirituality, culture, emotional support and functional support. Taken together, these findings suggest that resilience was shaped not only by individual coping alone but also by the interaction of individual, relational, organisational and cultural resources. In particular, the qualitative findings indicated that volunteers’ capacities were reinforced through family permission and empathic listening, team-based collaboration, organisational support and culturally grounded practices of spirituality, togetherness and ngopeni lan ngrumati. These findings suggest that efforts to strengthen affiliated disaster volunteer resilience should extend beyond individual coping skills to include family-inclusive, culturally sensitive and organisationally supportive environments.

The research findings have the following practical and specific implications: