Flood hazards are the most common and destructive of all natural disasters. For decades, experts have been examining how flood losses can be mitigated. Just as in other risk domains, the study of risk perception and risk communication has gained increasing interest in flood risk management. Because of this research growth, a review of the state of the art in this domain is believed necessary. The review comprises 57 empirically based peer-reviewed articles on flood risk perception and communication from the Web of Science and Scopus databases. The characteristics of these articles are listed in a comprehensive table, presenting research design, research variables, and key findings. From this review, it follows that the majority of studies are of exploratory nature and have not applied any of the theoretical frameworks that are available in social science research. Consequently, a methodological standardization in measuring and analyzing people's flood risk perceptions and their adaptive behaviors is hardly present. This heterogeneity leads to difficulties in comparing results among studies. It is also shown that theoretical and empirical studies on flood risk communication are nearly nonexistent. The paper concludes with a summary on methodological issues in the fields of flood-risk perception and flood-risk communication and proposes an agenda for future research. Key words flood risk, risk perception, risk communication, literature review 3 1 I NT R O D UC T I O N Flood hazards are a serious threat to the economic and social structures of our society. Each year, floods claim approximately 20,000 lives and adversely affect at least 20 million people worldwide, mostly because of the homelessness resulting from flood events. (cf. 1) Recent studies have indicated that losses from flood hazards are expected to increase in coming years. This prognosis is mainly based on the predicted impacts of climate change. (2) In many countries, however, flood vulnerability is also expected to increase as a consequence of population growth and spatial expansion. (3) Around the world, flood-risk experts and decision makers face the challenge of finding techniques and measures to effectively cope with these hazards. In order to assess the negative impact of flood hazards, experts have gradually adopted a risk-based approach that focuses on the probability of events and the magnitude of negative consequences. (4) While this technical approach deals with "objective" risk assessment, a substantial group of researchers have concentrated on the "subjective" aspects of flood risk, which determine people's risk perception. Several researchers recognize that flood-risk management is shifting from a primarily objective approach to an integrated approach with attention to social aspects such as improving flood preparedness and response. (5,6) As such, the need to integrate lay knowledge into measures to prevent, mitigate, and deal with risk is a relatively new field of research. (7) Risk communication is becoming increasingly promulgated as...

Despite the prognoses of the effects of global warming (e.g., rising sea levels, increasing river discharges), few international studies have addressed how flood preparedness should be stimulated among private citizens. This article aims to predict Dutch citizens' flood preparedness intentions by testing a path model, including previous flood hazard experiences, trust in public flood protection, and flood risk perceptions (both affective and cognitive components). Data were collected through questionnaire surveys in two coastal communities (n= 169, n= 244) and in one river area community (n= 658). Causal relations were tested by means of structural equation modeling (SEM). Overall, the results indicate that both cognitive and affective mechanisms influence citizens' preparedness intentions. First, a higher level of trust reduces citizens' perceptions of flood likelihood, which in turn hampers their flood preparedness intentions (cognitive route). Second, trust also lessens the amount of dread evoked by flood risk, which in turn impedes flood preparedness intentions (affective route). Moreover, the affective route showed that levels of dread were especially influenced by citizens' negative and positive emotions related to their previous flood hazard experiences. Negative emotions most often reflected fear and powerlessness, while positive emotions most frequently reflected feelings of solidarity. The results are consistent with the affect heuristic and the historical context of Dutch flood risk management. The great challenge for flood risk management is the accommodation of both cognitive and affective mechanisms in risk communications, especially when most people lack an emotional basis stemming from previous flood hazard events.

No abstract

People's risk perceptions are generally regarded as an important determinant of their decisions to adjust to natural hazards. However, few studies have evaluated how risk communication programs affect these risk perceptions. This study evaluates the effects of a small-scale flood risk communication program in the Netherlands, consisting of workshops and focus group discussions. The effects on the workshop participants' (n = 24) and focus group participants' (n = 16) flood risk perceptions were evaluated in a pretest-posttest control group (n = 40) design that focused on two mechanisms of attitude change-direct personal experience and attitude polarization. We expected that (H1) workshop participants would show greater shifts in their flood risk perceptions compared with control group participants and that (H2) focus groups would rather produce the conditions for attitude polarization (shifts toward more extreme attitudinal positions after group discussion). However, the results provide only modest support for these hypotheses, perhaps because of a mismatch between the sessions' contents and the risk perception measures. An important contribution of this study is that it examined risk perception data by both conventional tests of the mean differences and tests for attitude polarization. Moreover, the possibility that attitude polarization could cause people to confirm their preexisting (hazard) beliefs could have important implications for risk communication.

Background, objective, and methods Despite the high levels of flood protection in the Netherlands, absolute safety is not guaranteed. Preparing Dutch society for potential flood disasters, including the preparedness of individual citizens, is one of the great challenges in future flood risk management. This thesis is aimed at increasing the understanding of citizens' intentions in flood preparation. Knowledge of the determinants of citizens' behavioural intentions is indispensable for developing well-founded, effective risk communication that is aimed at facilitating citizens' flood preparedness decisions. To study those behavioural intentions, we have adopted the Protective Action Decision Model (PADM, Lindell & Perry, 2000, 2004) which provides a social-psychological perspective on how people decide whether or not to prepare for disasters. This thesis contains four studies. These studies draw from the data that have been collected in three questionnaire surveys that were performed in flood risk areas along the Dutch coast, branches of the rivers Rhine and Meuse, and Lake Marken.

Although research indicates that adoption of flood preparations among Europeans is low, only a few studies have attempted to explain citizens’ preparedness behavior. This article applies the Protective Action Decision Model (PADM) to explain flood preparedness intentions in the Netherlands. Survey data (N = 1,115) showed that hazard-related attributes (e.g., perceived efficacy in protecting persons) were positively correlated, but failed to show that resource-related attributes (e.g., perceived costs) were negatively correlated with preparedness intentions. Although respondents rated the hazard-related attributes as more important than the resource-related attributes, moderated regression failed to detect practically meaningful interaction effects. Risk perception was also positively correlated with preparedness intentions but explained less variance than did the hazard-related attributes. Among the demographic characteristics, only female gender was consistently correlated with higher risk perception and the hazard-related attributes. Finally, risk area was correlated with perceived flood likelihood and consequences as well as the hazard-related attributes. Implications are discussed.

No abstract

In this paper we applied the psychometric paradigm to validate a questionnaire that assesses the risk perception characteristics of flooding and water nuisance. The state-trait anxiety inventory was used as a bench mark to determine whether perceptions are related to anxiety characteristics. A focus group was used to further validate the questionnaire. Factor analyses of 49 questionnaires identified eight flooding factors (explained variance 74%) and three water nuisance factors (explained variance 62%). Internal consistencies of the obtained scales were moderate to high. Like in the perception of external safety risks, "dread" seems to be the most important concept binding different characteristics. Although dread towards both flooding and water nuisance is rather low, it seems more present in the latter case. Furthermore, the extent of dread for water nuisance seems related to someone's state anxiety. In both cases awareness of "increasing risks" is clearly present, and we find the characteristics "(no) dread", "(un)controllable situation" and "does not affect me" to be related.