Should I stay or should I go? Factors in household decisions for or against relocation from a flood risk area

Planned relocation may permanently reduce exposure to natural hazards; however, residents in designated relocation zones are confronted with a broad array of challenges and face profound changes in their everyday lives. The present study empirically illustrates how economic, emotional, risk and social dimensions underpin household decisions to accept or decline a home buyout offer in a voluntary relocation program in the Eferding Basin, Austria. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 79 households living in the relocation zone, transcribed and subjected to qualitative content analysis.Risk appraisal and financial feasibility of moving to a new home function as entry points to the decision process. Risk perception is strongly influenced by biographical experiences, traumatic memories, and personal resources to cope with a flood event. Economic reasons are judged in the light of the children's future prospects. Fear and uncertainty about future floods as well as a personal bond to the place are critical emotional factors. By contrast, social relationships play a marginal role because those who leave tend to resettle close-by, and because solitude and autonomy are valued higher than neighborhood networks. Status as a long-term resident, newcomer or elderly person shifts the importance of specific factors, for instance, self-efficacy beliefs or intergenerational considerations.In order to facilitate relocation program implementation, compensation payments should be complemented by communication efforts addressing the emotional and risk dimensions. Communication activities should address those who leave as well as to those who stay and should be tailored to individual needs and resources of residents.     

What explains public support for climate policies? A review of empirical and experimental studies

The lack of broad public support prevents the implementation of effective climate policies. This article aims to examine why citizens support or reject climate policies. For this purpose, we provide a cross-disciplinary overview of empirical and experimental research on public attitudes and preferences that has emerged in the last few years. The various factors influencing policy support are divided into three general categories: (1) social-psychological factors and climate change perception, such as the positive influences of left-wing political orientation, egalitarian worldviews, environmental and self-transcendent values, climate change knowledge, risk perception, or emotions like interest and hope; (2) the perception of climate policy and its design, which includes, among others, the preference of pull over push measures, the positive role of perceived policy effectiveness, the level of policy costs, as well as the positive effect of perceived policy fairness and the recycling of potential policy revenues; (3) contextual factors, such as the positive influence of social trust, norms and participation, wider economic, political and geographical aspects, or the different effects of specific media events and communications. Finally, we discuss the findings and provide suggestions for future research.

Policy relevance

Public opinion is a significant determinant of policy change in democratic countries. Policy makers may be reluctant to implement climate policies if they expect public opposition. This article seeks to provide a better understanding of the various factors influencing public responses to climate policy proposals. Most of the studied factors include perceptions about climate change, policy and its attributes, all of which are amenable to intervention. The acquired insights can thus assist in improving policy design and communication with the overarching objective to garner more public support for effective climate policy.     

Avoiding or mitigating flooding: Bottom-up drivers of urban resilience to climate change in the USA

Coastal areas around the world are urbanizing rapidly, despite the threat of sea level rise and intensifying floods. Such development places an increasing number of people and capital at risk, which calls for public flood management as well as household level adaptation measures that reduce social vulnerability to flooding and climate change. This study explores several private adaptation responses to flood risk, that are driven by various behavioral triggers. We conduct a survey among households in hazard-prone areas in eight coastal states in the USA, of which, some have recently experienced major flooding. While numerous empirical studies have investigated household-level flood damage mitigation, little attention has been given to examining the decision to retreat from flood zones. We examine what behavioral motives drive the choices for flood damage mitigation and relocation separately among property buyers and sellers. Hence, we focus on the drivers that shape demand for future development in flood-prone cities. We find that households’ choices to retreat from or to avoid flood zones (1) are highly sensitive to information that provokes people's feelings of fear, and (2) rely on hazardous events to trigger a protective action, which ideally would take place well before these events occur. We highlight that major flooding may cause a potential risk of large-scale outmigration and demographic changes in flood-prone areas, putting more low-income households at risk. Therefore, coordinated policies that integrate bottom-up drivers of individual climate adaptation are needed to increase urban resilience to floods.     

Climate change and coastal megacities: Adapting through mobility

Climate change poses threats to individuals, communities, and cities globally. Global conversations and scholarly debates have explored ways people adapt to the impacts of climate change including through migration and relocation. This study uses Lagos, Nigeria as a case study to examine the relationship between flooding events, migration intentions as a preferred adaptation, and the destination choices for affected residents. The study draws on a mixed-methods approach which involved a survey of 352 residents and semi-structured interviews with 21 residents. We use a capability approach to analyze mobility decisions following major or repetitive flood events. We found that the majority of affected residents are willing to migrate but the ability to do so is constrained by economic, social, and political factors leading to involuntary immobility. Furthermore, intra-city relocation is preferred to migration to other states in Nigeria or internationally. These findings challenge popular Global South-North migration narratives. Indeed, some residents welcome government-supported relocation plans but others remain skeptical due to lack of trust. Community-based relocation may therefore be preferred by some Lagosians. Overall, this study contributes a nuanced understanding of mobility intentions in response to climate-induced flooding in one of the world’s largest coastal cities.     

The safe development paradox: An agent-based model for flood risk under climate change in the European Union

With increasing flood risk due to climate change and socioeconomic trends, governments are under pressure to continue implementing flood protection measures, such as dikes, to reduce flood risk. However, research suggests that a sole focus on government-funded flood protection leads to an adverse increase in exposure as people and economic activities tend to concentrate in protected areas. Moreover, governmental flood protection can reduce the incentive for autonomous adaptation by local households, which paradoxically results in more severe consequences if an extreme flood event occurs. This phenomenon is often referred to as the ‘safe development paradox’ or ‘levee effect’ and is generally not accounted for in existing flood risk models used to assess developments in future flood risk under climate change. In this study we assess the impact of extreme flood events for the European Union using a large-scale agent-based model (ABM). We quantify how the safe development paradox affects (1) population growth and the increase in exposed property values, (2) the reduction in investments to flood-proof buildings as public protection increases, and (3) the increase in potential damage should a flood occur. For this analysis, we apply an ABM that integrates the dynamic behaviour of governments and residents into a large-scale flood risk assessment framework, in which we include estimates of changing population growth. We find that the impact of extreme flood events increases considerably when governments provide high protection levels, especially in large metropolitan areas. Moreover, we demonstrate how policy that stimulates the flood-proofing of buildings can largely counteract the effects of the safe development paradox.     

Public understandings of air pollution: the ‘localisation’ of environmental risk

Recent perspectives on public understandings of global environmental risk have emphasised the interpretation, judgement and ‘sense-making’ that takes place, modes of perception that are inextricably tied to aspects of ‘local’ context. In this paper we offer a current picture of the ways in which residents think about the problem of urban air pollution. To do this we utilise elements of a wider research project involving a survey and in-depth interviews with members of the public. In this way — and drawing upon the prior air pollution perception literature and recent work in the field of environmental and risk perception — we present a more analytical interpretation than has hitherto been approached. Conclusions are drawn which stress the localisation of people's understandings within the immediate physical, social and cultural landscape and also through a trust in personal experiences over any kind of information-based evidence. From this position, and with the development of implications for policy, we demonstrate the need to study public perceptions if the objectives of air quality, and more generally, environmental management are to be achieved.     

Adaptive capacity in evolving peri-urban spaces: Responses to flood risk in the Upper Lerma River Valley,Mexico

Although ‘peri-urban’ and ‘rur-urban’ growth patterns are now prominent in previously rural areas of Latin America, there has been little exploration of the implication of these patterns for social vulnerability to hazards and adaptive capacity for hazard management. A case study of flooding in the Upper Lerma River Valley, Mexico, illustrates how livelihood and land use change in these peri-urban spaces have altered residents’ perceptions of risk and loss, while public officials are adhering to a traditional sectoral and structural interpretation of flooding as an agricultural problem, managed by agricultural and water agencies. The current system of treating flooding as an agricultural problem, managed by agricultural and water agencies, does not address the increased role of urbanization as a driver of flooding and water risk in the valley. The resulting mismatch in policy potentially exacerbates regional vulnerability in face of rising flood losses. Enhancing adaptive capacity in this context requires a new vision of the populations and communities of the region as an integrated system, supported by institutions that facilitate cross-scale and intersectoral planning.     

Equitable resilience in flood prone urban areas in Sri Lanka: A case study in Colombo Divisional Secretariat Division

Amid increasing flood incidences and damages in many parts of the world, the fundamental question arises as to the extent to which poor and marginalized residents can manage disasters by receiving equitable, fair and just support. This paper seeks to examine this question by focusing on a poor and vulnerable area of Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. Administratively this area is called Colombo Divisional Secretariat Division (DSD). Here mainly low-income residents live in congested housing conditions with narrow streets and poor drainage management. For years, this Division was regarded as one of the most flood vulnerable areas of Sri Lanka. To understand the resaons, we conducted our field research in this area and interviewed DSD officials and local people with three key equitable resilience dimensions in mind: distributive, procedural and contextual equities. We found that the intensity and frequency of rainfalls had increased in the area, but the residents had not received any flood protection support from the government due largely to some legal and socio-political complications. Many expressed their fear of the next flood incident. As these residents were without legal land ownership the government did not pay much attention to their needs. We also found that a low education level and a lack of political representation led to the marginalization of people in this area. Using information we collected at the Colombo DSD office and other relevant government agencies, we then examine a set of factors that are relevant to income and poverty level, population density, quality of housing, education, infrastructure and participatory decision making. The results show that flood loss and damage risks were heightened by such social vulnerability factors as low income, an unaffordability of flood resilient houses and an absence of policy implementations for flood resilient infrastructure. We also found that a lack of community leadership led to poor participation in decision making. This paper then highlights the important area for mainstreaming equitable community resilience actions.     

The role of social norms in climate adaptation: Mediating risk perception and flood insurance purchase

Flood insurance plays an important role in climate adaptation by recovering insured losses in the event of catastrophic flooding. Voluntary adoption of flood insurance has been seen as a function of risk perception that is shaped by social norms. This paper attempts to clarify the relationship between these factors. It is based on a household survey conducted in the eastern cities of Australia and involving a total of 501 randomly selected residents. Results of a path analysis show that the likelihood of having flood insurance cover was associated with perceived social norms, but not perceived flood risk. In addition, perceived norms and risk were statistically related to each other. It is concluded that social norms played a mediating role between insuring decision and risk perception. Risk perception might influence the insuring decision indirectly through shaping perception of social norms. This implies that adaptive behaviour is not necessarily a function of risk perception, but an outcome of its impacts upon the ways in which the individuals situate themselves in their social circles or the society. There is a feedback process in which individual perceptions of risk manifest as both a cause and effect, shaping and being shaped by the socio-cultural context.     

Understanding U.S. public support for domestic climate change policies

In the U.S., public support for federal, state and local efforts to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) continues to be a crucial element of the political viability of these proposals. We present a detailed analysis of the reasons given by the general public of Michigan and Virginia for supporting or rejecting a number of policies that could be implemented to meet GHG reductions. The data allow us to analyze the relationships between reasons provided by respondents, social psychological and demographic characteristics, and policy support. This analysis can provide policymakers pragmatic guidance in (1) developing tactics to engage the public that build on current concerns about climate change policies and (2) crafting and communicating policies that garner support from various segments of the public. This analysis also raises theoretical questions regarding the relationship between public discourse on environmental issues and the formation of public policy support. We suggest that future efforts to understand the U.S. dynamics of public support for climate change policies could benefit from understanding the public discursive and the reasoning processes that underlie public opinion formation.     

On climate change and cultural geography: farming on the Lizard Peninsula, Cornwall, UK

Climate change as a global problem has moved relatively swiftly into high profile political debates over the last 20?years or so, with a concomitant diffusion from the natural sciences into the social sciences. The study of the human dimensions of climate change has been growing in momentum through research which attempts to describe, evaluate, quantify and model perceptions of climate change, understand more about risk and assess the construction of policy. Cultural geographers?? concerns with the construction of knowledge, the workings of social relations in space and the politics and poetics of place-based identities provide a lens through which personal, collective and institutional responses to climate change can be evaluated using critical and interpretative methodologies. Adopting a cultural geography approach, this paper examines how climate change as a particular environmental discourse is constructed through memory, observation and conversation, as well as materialised in farming practices on the Lizard Peninsula, Cornwall, UK.     

‘Signals’ from pre-crisis discourse: Lessons from UK flooding for global environmental policy change?

This paper evaluates policy accelerations after past flood crises in the UK (in 1947, 1953, 1998 and 2000) and explores their value as surrogates or metaphors for how governments might respond with policy changes to the local expressions of global climate and environmental change in the future. We find that these past policy change accelerations were, in general, not based on the development of new ideas but on bringing forward existing ideas that were already the subject of widespread professional or public discourse. We suggest, therefore, that we may be able to detect now, as ‘signals’ within current policy discourse, the embryos of the policy shifts that are likely to come about as part of any crisis-response adaptation to future climate change. If this is the case, then we believe that those with policy responsibilities now may be able to begin carefully and proactively to prepare the ground for such policy changes ahead of the crisis events that will alone trigger their acceleration and adoption.     

Varieties of flood risk governance in Europe: How do countries respond to driving forces and what explains institutional change?

Floods are challenging the resilience of societies all over the world. In many countries there are discussions on diversifying the strategies for flood risk management, which implies some sort of policy change. To understand the possibilities of such change, a thorough understanding of the forces of stability and change of underlying governance arrangements is required. It follows from the path dependency literature that countries which rely strongly on flood infrastructures, as part of flood defense strategies, would be more path dependent. Consequently there is a higher chance to find more incremental change in these countries than in countries that have a more diversified set of strategies. However, comparative and detailed empirical studies that may help scrutinize this assumption are lacking.To address this knowledge gap, this paper investigates how six European countries (Belgium, England, France, The Netherlands, Poland and Sweden) essentially differ with regard to their governance of flood risks. To analyze stability and change, we focus on how countries are responding to certain societal and ecological driving forces (ecological turn; climate change discourses; European policies; and the increasing prevalence of economic rationalizations) that potentially affect the institutional arrangements for flood risk governance. Taking both the variety of flood risk governance in countries and their responses to driving forces into account, we can clarify the conditions of stability or change of flood risk governance arrangements more generally. The analysis shows that the national-level impact of driving forces is strongly influenced by the flood risk governance arrangements in the six countries. Path dependencies are indeed visible in countries with high investments in flood infrastructure accompanied by strongly institutionalized governance arrangements (Poland, the Netherlands) but not only there. Also more diversified countries that are less dependent on flood infrastructure and flood defense only (England) show path dependencies and mostly incremental change. More substantial changes are visible in countries that show moderate diversification of strategies (Belgium, France) or countries that ‘have no strong path yet’ in comprehensive flood risk governance (Sweden). This suggests that policy change can be expected when there is both the internal need and will to change and a barrage of (external) driving forces pushing for change.     

Drivers and dimensions of flood risk perceptions: Revealing an implicit selection bias and lessons for communication policies

Flood damages have increased in many regions around the world, and they are expected to continue to rise in the future due to climate change. To reverse this trend, awareness of flood risk among the population is required to support flood risk management policies and improve flood preparedness. However, empirical studies on the drivers of flood risk perceptions conducted thus far have reported mixed and contradictory results. The aim of this study is to provide insights into the factors that influence perceptions of various dimensions of flood risk to draw lessons to guide flood risk communication strategies. We test a variety of hypotheses of possible factors of influence on flood risk perceptions that are motivated by theoretical concepts and previous empirical studies, whilst also controlling for socio-demographic variables. A representative sample of 2,976 residents answered our survey assessing the role that past flood experiences and risk communication play in shaping flood risk perceptions. Besides exploring flood risk perceptions more robustly, this large sample also facilitates the systematic study of ‘don’t know’ answers, which are often dismissed as missing data in many studies. Rather in this study we analyze what ‘don’t know’ answers reflect in terms of knowledge about particular dimensions of flood risk. The study finds that older people, as well as those who have higher levels of income and education, are significantly more likely to express their flood risk perceptions, respondents who are unable to answer the questions on flood risk perceptions face a lower flood risk, report to have been living in their neighbourhood for a shorter period of time and have less first-hand flood experience. Previous studies might thus be biased by an implicit selection effect. Finally, we show that findings are highly dependent on other explicit choices made by researchers, including the apparently self-fulfilling impact of selecting one explanatory framework over another. New insights emerge from the role that information campaigns and social vulnerability play in the ability to answer the questions. Based on our findings, we offer recommendations for improving flood risk communication policies, specifically increasing the frequency of communication, ensuring that campaigns are focused in terms of the content they provide and the subgroups of the population they target.     

The art of adaptation: Living with climate change in the rural American Southwest

As adaptation has come to the forefront in climate change discourse, research, and policy, it is crucial to consider the effects of how we interpret the concept. This paper draws attention to the need for interpretations that foster policies and institutions with the breadth and flexibility to recognize and support a wide range of locally relevant adaptation strategies. Social scientists have argued that, in practice, the standard definition of adaptation tends to prioritize economic over other values and technical over social responses, draw attention away from underlying causes of vulnerability and from the broader context in which adaptive responses take place, and exclude discussions of inequality, justice, and transformation. In this paper, we discuss an alternate understanding of adaptation, which we label “living with climate change,” that emerged from an ethnographic study of how rural residents of the U.S. Southwest understand, respond to, and plan for weather and climate in their daily lives, and we consider how it might inform efforts to develop a more comprehensive definition. The discussion brings into focus several underlying features of this lay conception of adaptation, which are crucial for understanding how adaptation actually unfolds on the ground: an ontology based on nature–society mutuality; an epistemology based on situated knowledge; practice based on performatively adjusting human activities to a dynamic biophysical and social environment; and a placed-based system of values. We suggest that these features help point the way toward a more comprehensive understanding of climate change adaptation, and one more fully informed by the understanding that we are living in the Anthropocene.     

Resilience for disaster risk management in a changing climate: Practitioners’ frames and practices

There is a growing use of resilience ideas within the disaster risk management literature and policy domain. However, few empirical studies have focused on how resilience ideas are conceptualized by practitioners, as they implement them in practice. Using Hajer's ‘social-interactive discourse theory’ this research contributes to the understanding of how practitioners frame, construct and make sense of resilience ideas in the context of changes in institutional arrangements for disaster risk management that explicitly include the resilience approach and climate change considerations. The case study involved the roll out of the Natural Disaster Resilience Program in Queensland, Australia, and the study involved three sites in Queensland. The methods used were observation of different activities and the physical sites, revision of documents related to the Natural Disaster Resilience Program and in-depth semi-structured interviews with key informants, all practitioners who had direct interaction with the program. The research findings show that practitioners construct the meaning of disaster resilience differently, and these are embedded in diverse storylines. Within these storylines, practitioners gave different interpretations and emphasis to the seven discourse categories that characterized their resilience discourse. Self-reliance emerged as one of the paramount discourse categories but we argue that caution needs to be used when promoting values of self-reliance. If the policy impetus is a focus on learning, research findings indicate it is also pertinent to move from experiential learning toward social learning. The results presented in this study provide helpful insights to inform policy design and implementation of resilience ideas in disaster risk management and climate change, and to inform theory.     

Impact assessments and policy responses to sea-level rise in three US states: An exploration of human-dimension uncertainties

Uncertainties in the human dimensions of global change deeply affect the assessment and responses to climate change impacts such as sea-level rise (SLR). This paper explores the uncertainties in the assessment process and in state-level policy and management responses of three US states to SLR. The findings reveal important political, economic, managerial, and social factors that enable or constrain SLR responses; question disasters as policy windows; and uncover new policy opportunities in the history of state coastal policies. Results suggest that a more realistic, and maybe more useful picture of climate change impacts will emerge if assessments take more seriously the locally embedded realities and constraints that affect individual decision-makers’ and communal responses to climate change.     

Local collective action: Adaptation to coastal erosion in the Monkey River Village,Belize

Successful adaptation to environmental change and variability is closely connected with social groups’ ability to act collectively, but many social-ecological challenges exceed local adaptive capacity which necessitate assistance from governmental institutions. Few studies have investigated how local collective action can be used to enrol external support for adaptation. This paper reduces this research gap by analysing a locally driven adaptation process in response to coastal erosion in Monkey River Village, Belize. Drawing on literature on adaptation and political ecology, we examine the different strategies the local residents have used over time to influence government authorities to support them in curbing the coastal erosion. Our findings show that the local mobilisation generated government support for a temporary sea defence and that collective strategies emerge as a response to threats to a place specific way of life. Our case illustrates that it was essential that the villagers could ally with journalists, researchers and local NGOs to make their claims for protection heard by the government. The paper contributes to adaptation research by arguing that local collective action, seen as contestation over rights to protection from environmental change, can be a means for places and communities not prioritised by formal policies to enrol external support for adaptation. Our study supports and adds to the perspective that attention to formal arrangements such as adaptation policy alone has limited explanatory power to understand collective responses to change.     

Flood insurance arrangements in the European Union for future flood risk under climate and socioeconomic change

Flood risk will increase in many areas around the world due to climate change and increase in economic exposure. This implies that adequate flood insurance schemes are needed to adapt to increasing flood risk and to minimise welfare losses for households in flood-prone areas. Flood insurance markets may need reform to offer sufficient and affordable financial protection and incentives for risk reduction. Here, we present the results of a study that aims to evaluate the ability of flood insurance arrangements in Europe to cope with trends in flood risk, using criteria that encompass common elements of the policy debate on flood insurance reform. We show that the average risk-based flood insurance premium could double between 2015 and 2055 in the absence of more risk reduction by households exposed to flooding. We show that part of the expected future increase in flood risk could be limited by flood insurance mechanisms that better incentivise risk reduction by policyholders, which lowers vulnerability. The affordability of flood insurance can be improved by introducing the key features of public-private partnerships (PPPs), which include public reinsurance, limited premium cross-subsidisation between low- and high-risk households, and incentives for policyholder-level risk reduction. These findings were evaluated in a comprehensive sensitivity analysis and support ongoing reforms in Europe and abroad that move towards risk-based premiums and link insurance with risk reduction, strengthen purchase requirements, and engage in multi-stakeholder partnerships.