The determinants of households' flood mitigation decisions in France - on the possibility of feedback effects from past investments

Claire Richert (), Katrin Erdlenbruch and Charles Figuieres
Additional contact information
Claire Richert: UMR G-EAU - Gestion de l'Eau, Acteurs, Usages - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - AgroParisTech - IRSTEA - Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies pour l'environnement et l'agriculture - Montpellier SupAgro - Institut national d’études supérieures agronomiques de Montpellier

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the determinants of private flood mitigation in France. We conducted a survey among 331 inhabitants of two flood-prone areas and collected data on several topics, including individual flood mitigation, risk perception, risk experience, and sociodemographic characteristics. We estimate discrete choice models to explain either the precautionary measures taken by the household, or the intention to undertake such measures in the future. Our results confirm that the Protection Motivation Theory is a relevant framework to describe the mechanisms of private flood mitigation in France, highlighting in particular the importance of threat appraisal and previous experience of floods. Some sociodemographic features also play a significant role in explaining private flood mitigation. We also observed that respondents who had already taken precautionary measures have a lower perception of the risk of flooding than respondents who planned to implement such measures at the time of the survey. This result can be explained by the existence of a feedback effect of having taken precautionary measures on risk perception. If subsequent studies support this assumption, it would imply that intended measures, rather than implemented ones, should be examined to explore further the determinants of private flood mitigation.

Keywords: floods; risk; France; mitigation; risk perception (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-01
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-02175820v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Published in Ecological Economics, 2017, 131 (C), pp.342-352. ⟨10.1016/j.ecolecon.2016.09.014⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-02175820v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The determinants of households' flood mitigation decisions in France - on the possibility of feedback effects from past investments (2017)
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:hal:journl:hal-02175820

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2016.09.014

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().