Fatality outcomes in the 2025 Ms 6.8 Tingri earthquake: Roles of seismic hazard, structural damage, and human behavioral response

The 2025 Ms 6.8 Tingri earthquake in Tibet, China, caused 126 fatalities and highlighted the multifactorial nature of earthquake fatality outcomes in high-altitude plateau communities, where traditional Tibetan earthen–timber dwellings are widespread. Earthquake fatality outcomes are commonly analyzed in relation to ground-motion intensity and building damage, whereas human behavioral response is less consistently incorporated into empirical analysis. Drawing on first-hand data collected during rapid post-earthquake reconnaissance 4–18 days after the event, this study aims to (1) examine fatality outcomes in relation to seismic hazard, structural damage, and human behavioral response; (2) develop a structured approach to quantifying human behavioral response and assessing its incremental explanatory value; and (3) inform seismic fatality risk governance from an integrated perspective. An analytical framework was developed to link hazard input, structural damage, and human behavioral response, with behavioral response operationalized as an indicator-based composite score. Comparative regression analyses were conducted to evaluate whether the inclusion of the behavioral-response variable provided additional explanatory information beyond hazard and structural-damage variables in this case dataset. The inclusion of this variable was associated with imporved model fit and lower error metrics, while higher behavioral-response scores were associated with lower fatality intensity. These findings suggest that human behavioral response provides an additional explanatory dimension for understanding earthquake fatality outcomes in the Tingri case and support the consideration of behavioral-response indicators in post-earthquake fatality analysis and life-safety-oriented emergency management in Tingri and similar high-risk plateau settings.