Swimming alone? Why linking flood risk perception and behavior requires more than “it's the individual, stupid”

Abstract

A common assertion in discussions of flooding is that risk perception is critical and is linked to risk‐mitigating behavior. Furthermore, many assert that the adverse effects of floods could be reduced by changes in risk communication, thereby influencing risk perception to foster mitigating behavior. We argue that these assertions are based on quite questionable underlying assumptions: That stakeholders are generally aware of flood risk, that they have the capacity to engage in disaster risk reduction, and that their actions can be effective. The belief in and policies influenced by these three questionable assertions support, in turn, policies that shift responsibility for flood risk reduction onto individuals and homeowners, without regard for social and spatial justice issues. In contrast, we argue that context matters to understanding the complexity of the relation between flood risk perception and behavior, local power relations, and other constraints and opportunities that affect stakeholders. While the academic community has long played a pivotal role in supporting practical flood risk management, future research should take a more critical perspective on the underlying assumptions and focus on improving coordination across theories, methods, and variables, fostering comparative studies across disciplines, contexts, and scales. This article is categorized under: Engineering Water > Planning Water Human Water > Water as Imagined and Represented Science of Water > Water Extremes

‘Do the resilient things.’ Residents' perspectives on responsibilities for flood risk adaptation in England

“…This has been denoted the ‘behavioural turn’ in FRM (Kuhlicke et al, 2020). Adaptive behaviour entails a huge variation of actions that residents can undertake to reduce individual flood risk (Rufat et al, 2020). In this contribution, we focus specifically on individual adaptive actions of these three categories: technical, financial, and behavioural actions.…”

“…However, little is known about how residents perceive their own responsibility since residents have for a long time been the ‘recipients’ of FRM and have played less active roles in FRM processes. While academics and policy makers generally agree that residents need to take more responsibility, how residents envision their own and others' role in managing flood risk is often neglected (Rufat et al, 2020; Thaler et al, 2020). Insight into this is needed to motivate residents to take responsibility in flood risk adaptation.…”

Implementing resilience in flood risk management

“…Kuhlicke and the multidisciplinary team of authors writing on the behavioral turn in flood risk management (Kuhlicke et al, 2020) discuss in detail three underlying assumptions of increased involvement of citizens in flood risk management: the motivations of citizens, the effectiveness of measures, and capacities of citizens. In this vein, Rufat et al (2020) discuss in their opinion paper need for a more nuanced debate on the link between flood risk perception and risk‐mitigating behavior. Attems, Thaler, Genovese, and Fuchs (2020) then provide an overview of the measures that homeowners can take to enhance resilience by using property‐level flood risk adaptation (PLFRA) measures.…”

Erweiterung von Kosten-Nutzen-Analysen im Hochwassermanagement durch Berücksichtigung sozialer und psychologischer Verwundbarkeit

“…schutz, bauliche Vorsorge oder Risikovorsorge), wo (urbaner bzw. ländlicher Raum), wann (Frage der Priorisierung) und von wem (öffentliche Hand, Unternehmen, privater Haushalt, Public-Private-Partnership) umgesetzt werden, sind neben der Gegenfrage, wo keine Maßnahmen gesetzt werden, wesentliche Konfliktpunkte in Entscheidungsprozessen im Hochwassermanagement (Thaler und Hartmann 2016;Kuhlicke et al 2020;Rufat et al 2020).…”