What affects government planning for climate change adaptation: Evidence from the U.S. states

Abstract

As climate change unfolds, formal planning for climate adaptation is emerging at all levels of governments. This paper examines the factors that lead U.S. state governments to develop comprehensive adaptation plans. Using an event history analysis, we find that a state is more likely to engage in adaptation planning we find that a state is more likely to engage in adaptation planning when it experienced more extreme weather events recently, has more economic activities in coastal regions, or when it has high levels of incomes and civic engagement. We also show that political ideology plays a critical role in subnational adaptation decision making. A state is less likely to pursue adaptation planning when it has a Republican governor or has a lack of preference for environmental legislations. In addition to the internal characteristics, our study further provides evidence of the external influence from other nearby adapting states through spatial policy diffusion. These findings shed light on the motivation for and obstacles to a state's adoption of adaptation policy and also provide implications for environmental federalism.

Sea Level Rise and City-Level Climate Action

“…Therefore, the finding that there is no association between future risk from SLR and current city-level climate action is consistent with some studies (Pitt, 2010;Reckien et al, 2015) and inconsistent with others (Miao, 2019;Posey, 2009;Yeganeh et al, 2019). Posey (2009) showed that anticipated impacts of climate change can induce membership in climate networks for cities at high risk from climate change in the USA which included those in close proximity to the coast.…”

“…It was hypothesized that experience of an extreme weather event i.e. recent floods, with fatal consequences for human life, could act as a determinant of climate action by sensitizing local government to climate risk (Miao, 2019). This was treated as a binary variable.…”

“…A number of studies have previously assessed whether coastal proximity, as a proxy for future risk from SLR, is a driver of climate action (Miao, 2019;Posey, 2009;Reckien et al, 2015;Yeganeh et al, 2019). Drawing comparisons across these studies is challenging as climate action has been defined in numerous, different ways.…”

Rethinking Climate Change Leadership: An Analysis of the Ambitiousness of State GHG Targets

“…Similarly, within climate adaptation literature, Koski and Keating (2018) examine policy goals used in climate planning to understand the implication of types of policy tools on different stakeholders and actors. Other works such as Miao (2019) apply spatial regression to DOI, and Rai (2020) examine differences among predictors of dichotomous policy adoption and the number of policy goals. These studies are growing yet few, and there is a need for continued expansion in our understanding of how predictors vary with goal intensity.…”

Disentangling municipal capacities for citizen participation in transformative climate adaptation

“…Public participation has been demonstrated to positively impact the transformative potential for adaptation, particularly when multiple actors are recognised and involved in several stages of the decision‐making process (Cattino & Recken, 2021). Similarly, Miao (2019) found that US states with high levels of civic engagement were more likely to engage in adaptation.…”