Households (un)willingness to perform private flood risk reduction – Results from a Swedish survey. (July 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Grahn, Tonje; Jaldell, Henrik
• Is Part Of: Safety science. Volume 116(2019)
• Page Start: 127
• Page End: 136
• Publication Date: 2019-07
• Subjects: Flood -- Risk reduction -- Protection motivation theory -- Risk perception; Industrial accidents -- Periodicals; Accident Prevention -- Periodicals; Safety -- Periodicals; Travail -- Accidents -- Périodiques; 363.11
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ssci.2019.03.011
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0925-7535

Abstract

Highlights: The confidence in public flood risk reduction is low. The confidence in private response efficiency is low. Homeowners that haven't performed FRR consider themselves to be less knowledgeable of FRR. They believe they have little impact on their own safety in case of exposure to natural hazards. FRR are characterized by previous exposure, good knowledge and high sense of responsibility. Abstract: This study applies the protection motivation theory (PMT) in analysing homeowners' flood risk perception and their risk reduction behaviour. A survey was completed by 1143 households in flood-prone residential areas in Sweden. Respondents were asked about their flood experience, their beliefs about their future private flood risk, their trust in public risk reduction and their perception of how responsibility for flood risk reduction is divided between different governmental and private institutions. This study finds that homeowners that have implemented private flood risk reduction (FRR) had to a larger extent been exposed to floods in the past and they considered public FRR to be insufficient. They also had a greater sense of responsibility and believed they had considerable knowledge on how to reduce their private flood risk. Respondents were also asked about their preferences for performing 15 specific private risk reducing measures. The most frequent answer given by homeowners was (1) they do not have the knowledge needed to evaluate the measures. (2) They have evaluated the measures and deemed that the measures will not be able to effectively reduce their private flood risk. To facilitate and exploit the flood risk reduction potential of households, this study identifies the following four areas of flood risk management that need to be better communicated to residents in vulnerable residential areas: Objective flood risk, response efficacy regarding private and public FRR measures, skills that can increase homeowners' self-efficacy, and the actual responsibility distribution by law concerning private property flood risk reduction.