Contextualizing cross-national patterns in household climate change adaptation

Abstract

Understanding social and behavioral drivers and constraints of household adaptation is essential to effectively address increasing climate-induced risks. Factors shaping household adaptation are commonly treated as universal; despite an emerging understanding that adaptations are shaped by social, institutional, and cultural contexts. Using original surveys in the United States, China, Indonesia, and the Netherlands (N=3,789) - we explore variations in factors shaping households’ adaptations to flooding, the costliest hazard worldwide. We find that social influence, worry, climate change beliefs, self-efficacy, and perceived costs exhibit universal effects on household adaptations, despite countries’ differences. Disparities occur in the effects of response efficacy, flood experience, beliefs in governmental actions, demographics, and media, which we attribute to specific cultural or institutional characteristics. Climate adaptation policies can leverage on the revealed similarities when extrapolating best practices across countries, yet should exercise caution as context-specific socio-behavioral drivers may discourage or even reverse household adaptation motivation.

Coping with increasing tides: Evolving agglomeration dynamics and technological change under exacerbating hazards

“…Also, climate shocks could align with hydrological flood maps and hazard patterns corresponding to different impacts under the downscaled IPCC scenarios. Third, governments, households, and firms are known to take climate adaptation action to reduce the adverse impacts of hazards (Leitold et al, 2020;Linnenluecke, 2017;Neise and Revilla Diez, 2019;Noll et al, 2022;Vousdoukas et al, 2020). Hence, private and public climate change adaptation could be jointly considered to analyze both limits and opportunities that regions have for development despite adversities.…”

Spatial (mis)alignment between climate-related risks and risk perceptions across the US

“…Examination of the spatial (mis)alignment between climate-related hazards and risk perceptions has adaptation relevance beyond the US. In a cross-national survey of hazard-prone regions, worry about hazard impacts was a consistent driver of adaptation, suggesting that the spatial examination of (mis)alignment between risk perceptions and risk may reveal insights and opportunities for adaptation action internationally (Noll et al 2022). Although public risk perceptions are not the only social construct policymakers should consider, a fine scale spatial distribution of climate hazards and public perceptions of those hazards can help identify opportunities for improved climate engagement and localized policy support.…”

Flood Vulnerability Curves and Household Flood Damage Mitigation Measures: an Econometric Analysis of Survey Data

“…FDM measures are designed to reduce flood damage. However, households that perceive higher flood risk are more likely to take FDM measures (Noll et al, 2022), This can result in a selection bias where households with FDM measures seem to have high damages, thus blurring the damage reducing effect of these measures. In econometrics, this selection bias manifests itself as a problem of endogeneity with the error term i , where the variable FDM is positively correlated with both the dependent variable damage ratio and the unobserved household characteristics in error term i .…”

“…This means that it is likely that both flood damage and the implementation of FDM measures are driven by individual characteristics, such as perceived flood risk prior to the flood event that relates to their actual flood risk profile. The reason is that households who face higher flood risk are more likely to take FDM measures (Noll et al, 2022), which results in treatment (with FDM) and control (without FDM) groups that systematically differ in their risk profiles. In other words, it is likely that characteristics of households with FDM measures result in higher flood damage compared to households without these measures.…”