Flood risk perception along the Lower Danube river, Romania

Iuliana Armas (), Radu Ionescu () and Cristina Posner ()

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2015, vol. 79, issue 3, 1913-1931

Abstract: Risk can be seen as both objective, quantifiable, and subjective, constructed at an individual level. This paper focuses on the latter and aims to explore flood perceptions in relation to socio-demographic variables and various economic measures. The data were drawn from four villages on the banks of the Danube using quantitative questionnaires, villages data sheet and in-depth semi-structured interviews. This mixed method approach allowed for ecologically sound findings. Inequality of income and capital are linked with variations of some risk perception dimensions such as disaster temporal proximity, perceived resilience, and also with a reluctance to think about the future and the dangers it might pose. Past floods are associated with most dimensions tested, including income, inequality, and whether the next flood appears to be imminent. Lower-income households expect some form of assistance not from the community, the church, or local authorities, but from the government. This highlights erosion of social values, or inter-household monetisation, as the other major issue, alongside inequality, faced by rural populations living on the banks of one of Europe’s greatest rivers. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Keywords: Risk perception; Income; Flooding; Inequality; Danube; Resilience (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11069-015-1939-8 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:spr:nathaz:v:79:y:2015:i:3:p:1913-1931

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-015-1939-8

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().