Impact of recent flood on the economy of small business at Rockhampton

The paper investigates the impact of floods during 2010 December to 2011 January on small business at Rockhampton, A survey of 100 small businesses was undertaken to determine the impact of the recent flood for this study and the valid response rate was 55%. Four research questions and hypotheses were developed to test. The main purpose of the study was to find the relationship among location of business, number of employees including the owner, weekly turnover, and the year of establishment of the business and the impact of recent floods. To test the hypotheses Pearson and Spearman’s correlation were used. The results show that the impact of flood on small businesses is directly related to the location of businesses, weekly turnover, and small business with lower number of employees caused more flood impact on the businesses at 1% level of significance using Pearson correlation test. The number of years of establishment of small business is not correlated with the impact of flood and the results support that there is no correlation between the year of establishment of business and the impact of flood. The paper ends with limitations and policy implications.