Insights into flood risk misperceptions of homeowners in the Dutch river delta

Jantsje M. Mol*, Wouter Botzen, Julia Blasch, Hans de Moel

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Flooding is one of the most significant natural disasters worldwide. Neverthe- less, voluntary take-up of individual damage reduction measures is low. A potential expla- nation is that flood risk perceptions of individual homeowners are below objective estimates of flood risk, which may imply that they underestimate the flood risk and the damage that can be avoided by damage reduction measures. The aim of this article is to assess possible flood risk misperceptions of floodplain residents in the Netherlands, and to offer insights into factors that are related with under- or overestimation of perceived flood risk. We analyzed survey data of 1,848 homeowners in the Dutch river delta and examine how perceptions of flood probability and damage relate to objective risk assessments, such as safety standards of dikes, as well as heuristics, including the availability heuristic and the affect heuristic. Results show that many Dutch floodplain inhabitants significantly overestimate the probability, but underestimate the maximum expected water level of a flood. We further observe that many respondents apply the availability heuristic.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1450-1468
JournalRisk Analysis
Volume40
Issue number7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2020

Funding

We would like to thank conference participants at the European Conference on Risk Perception, Behavior, Management and Response in Paris and SPUDM 2019 in Amsterdam for valuable comments. This research has received financial support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) VIDI (452.14.005) grant. We would like to thank conference participants at the European Conference on Risk Perception, Behavior, Management and Response in Paris and SPUDM 2019 in Amsterdam for valuable comments. This research has received financial support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) VIDI (452.14.005) grant.

FundersFunder number
Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek452.14.005

    Keywords

    • affect heuristic
    • availability heuristic
    • flood preparedness
    • objective risk
    • risk perception

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