Decision Analysis of the Adaptation of Households to Extreme Floods Using an Extended Protection Motivation Framework—A Case Study from Ethiopia

Melese Mulu Baylie () and Csaba Fogarassy
Additional contact information
Melese Mulu Baylie: Department of Economics, College of Business and Economics, Debre Tabor University, Debre Tabor 272, Ethiopia
Csaba Fogarassy: Institute of Sustainable Development and Farming, Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences (Former Szent Istvan University), 2100 Gödöllő, Hungary

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 10, 1-20

Abstract: Private extreme flood adaptation measures are cost effective and environmentally friendly. The objective of this study is to explore the major adaptation strategies, the determinants of the decisions of households to flood adaptation, specific prophylactic measures, and the constraints of these adaptation measures. A multi-stage sampling technique was employed to select the 337 samples for the study. As the data analysis showed, farm households adopted moving to high elevation places, selling cattle, seasonal migration, flood tolerant rice, planting trees, and the construction of a dike as adaptation measures to flood. The binary logistic regression results from both the socioeconomic and protection motivation theory (PMT) showed that marital status, sex, family size, off-farm income, previous flood experience, access to credit, and the average number of extension visits had a statistically significant positive influence on the flood adaptation decision of households. On the other hand, age, educational attainment, farm size, and access to extension played a negative but statistically insignificant role in flood adaptation decision. The scientific novelty of the paper is that its results revealed that not only the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of households play a role in the decision-making reactions related to the flood, but also the psychological preparedness of the decision makers. The analysis also drew attention that, due to the mitigation of global influences, in the coming years, households can assume a much more decisive role in the process of local food supply. Therefore, in order to ensure safe supply, climate change-related measures and adaptation strategies must be defined very precisely. Dealing with this phenomenon must be part of social and business innovation as it can cause not only food supply problems but also various migration effects, which, in the short term, would result in the most serious damage to the social system.

Keywords: extreme floods; adaptation of households to flood; climate mitigation; protection motivation theory; Ethiopia; climate change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/10/1755/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/10/1755/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:11:y:2022:i:10:p:1755-:d:937120

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().