Measuring impacts of extreme weather events using the life satisfaction approach

Charlotte von Möllendorff and Jesko Hirschfeld

Ecological Economics, 2016, vol. 121, issue C, 108-116

Abstract: Extreme weather events cause harm among the aggrieved party that often goes beyond material damages. This paper studies the impact of extreme weather events on measures of self-reported life satisfaction. Focusing on Germany, we use representative panel data for 2000–2011 to study the effect of seven storm & hail events and five floods on subjective well-being in the affected NUTS 3 regions. Our results indicate that both weather experiences bear statistically significant negative externalities. Following an extreme weather event, life satisfaction is reduced by 0.020–0.027 on the 11-point scale. While the effect of storm & hail events is rather immediate in nature, the effect from floods persists much longer.

Keywords: Extreme weather events; Subjective well-being; Life satisfaction; Nonmarket valuation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D61 I31 Q51 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:121:y:2016:i:c:p:108-116

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2015.11.013

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