Sharing the Pain: Perceptions of Fairness Affect Private and Public Response to Hazards

Abstract

Structural causes of vulnerability to hazards are well established in geographical research. But what facilitates individual adaptive behavior? How does the performance of government intervention affect such behavior? Drawing on political economy, environmental psychology, and climate justice perspectives, we explore how perceived fairness of responses to weather-related extreme events affects the public and private distribution of responsibility and action. We focus on flood risk and examine how perceptions of fairness of response by residents in flood-affected areas, along with their prior experience of flooding and perceptions of scope of government responsibility and capacity, affect willingness to take individual adaptive action. We use data from surveys of 356 households affected by a flood event in November 2009 in Cumbria, UK, and Galway, Ireland, to compare perceptions of fairness of responses and private intentions across two political jurisdictions. We find that aspects of fairness are related to willingness to take adaptive action but vary with context, experience, and knowledge of flooding. In Cumbria, where there is greater experience of flooding, willingness to act correlates with procedural justice, risk knowledge, and capacity. Capacity for flood management in Galway is firmly associated with state agencies, whereas in Cumbria it is perceived to result from responsibilities of public and private action. These findings highlight the central role of government action and its perceived fairness in structuring private responses to environmental risks and point to the crucial role of climate justice perspectives in navigating adaptation.

Threats to Common‐Pool Resources and the Importance of Forums: On the Emergence of Cooperation in CPR Problem Settings

“…Here, threats are perceived as one major driver for collective action and cooperation among actors (Blythe, Murray, & Flaherty, 2014;Schemmel et al, 2016). Literature on climate change adaptation and resource degradation primarily and deliberately considers natural threats (e.g., climate change effects) in order to scrutinize the vulnerability and adaptability of communities that are exposed to environmental events (Adger, Quinn, Lorenzoni, & Murphy, 2016;Gersonius, van Buuren, Zethof, & Kelder, 2016). In policy process theories, shocks from outside such as natural disasters (Birkland, 2016) and internal changes that threaten the position of individuals (Nohrstedt & Weible, 2010) also constitute important triggers for action.…”

Allocation of risk and benefits—distributional justices in mountain hazard management

“…This has led to an increasing discussion on changes beyond that of vulnerability and natural hazards (Fuchs 2009;Giupponi and Biscaro 2015). This change has driven a transformation in the role of the state in terms of responsibility sharing and increased individual responsibilities for mitigation and adaptation (Adger et al 2013(Adger et al , 2016Thaler and Levin-Keitel 2016). Additionally, the transformation of responsibility has been encouraged with the implementation of the EU Floods Directive in 2007, such as the introduction of Areas of Potentially Significant Flood Risk (APSFR), 1 insurance companies, or international risk-averse investors which request a re-thinking of the current financial distribution within hazard management (EC 2007;BMLFUW 2011BMLFUW , 2014PenningRowsell 2015;Husby et al 2016).…”

Barriers to Transformative Adaptation: Responses to Flood Risk in Ireland

“…Several scholars have argued that transformative adaptation may demand greater perceived procedural equity (Bahadur and Tanner, 2012;Mustelin and Handmer, 2012), and a re-structuring of historically embedded path-dependent institutional structures, organizational cultures and policy-making procedures (Burch, 2010b). This necessitates leadership from key decision-makers and commitment to genuine reflection and renewal, adopting practices that are perceived as equitable and transparent to overcome obstacles in adaptation processes in order to achieve acceptable outcomes (Burch, 2010a;Adger et al, 2016).…”