Providing people with appropriate information is an essential element to enhance their earthquake preparedness. To be effective, balance between supply and demand should be kept in dissemination of the information. To seek the balance, a cross-cultural questionnaire survey was made. Respondents were from two groups in the United States and one group in Japan. The survey revealed that, contrary to the other two groups, the Japanese group showed overdependency on government initiatives rather than taking self-help action for earthquake preparedness.