What motivates charities to prepare for climate change?

• In Event: Civil society, NGOs and climate action

Abstract

Climate change is resulting in more frequent and severe natural disasters, challenging the response of not just government but also the the nonprofit organizations which typically respond to disasters to provide shelter, clothing, food or cash assistance, and healthcare. Research suggests that these “social safety net” nonprofits are not preparing sufficiently for the coming disaster challenges, by not taking risk mitigation measures to safeguard their own human and capital resources (Gazley & Cash 2023).

Why are nonprofits not preparing, and what predicts preparation behavior? Two theories offer insights. The theory of planned behavior argues that behavioral change is conditioned on an individual’s attitudes and norms towards a proposed change, and whether they feel they have the agency to make the change happen (Ajzen 1991). Protection motivation theory adds the element of “threat experience” and “threat appraisal,” which account for direct experience with and knowledge of disasters (Floyd et. al 2000; Houser et al. 2022; Kothe et al 2019). These theories suggest that nonprofit organizations will be more likely to prepare for natural disasters when they have experienced one already, and when they feel that board members and other key stakeholders will support climate risk mitigation.

This paper uses a mixed methods approach to understand the origins of a positive risk perception that motivates charitable climate adaptation. The study began with a 2022 survey of Indiana social service nonprofits (N=467) which assessed charity leaders’ views on climate change, organizational disaster planning, past experience with disasters, and views on client vulnerability. This paper was presented at ISTR 2022 in Montréal.

This second phase of the study involves structured interviews with charity leaders who participated in the statewide survey (n = ~60). The interviews are intended to determine with more precision the origins of a charity leader’s risk perceptions and motivations to engage in risk mitigation. We hypothesize that climate adaptation is derived from direct threat experience, measured as actual organizational or personal experience with a disruptive natural disaster such as a recent tornado. We hypothesize that climate adaptation as a function of threat appraisal can originate either in (1) accurate views on climate change’s threat to a community, or in (2) networked activity that generates more indirect, but still beneficial knowledge about community threats and needs.

This paper will apply risk management theories that are seldom used in nonprofit and voluntary sector scholarship, and will offer insight into how climate change adaptation occurs in charities beyond the usual suspects of political views and education. The practical value will be in helping leaders understand where the obstacles to climate action lie, as well as their options and choices of paths forward. As a final note, we attempted to organize this paper into a “climate change” themed panel, and while we did not receive sufficient numbers to form a panel, we did identify Sophia Browning (“Rewilding England”) and would be happy to be grouped with her paper.

References

Ajzen, Icek, 1991. The theory of planned behavior. Organizational behavior and human decision processes 50(2): 179-211

Floyd, Donna L., Steven Prentice-Dunn, and Ronald W. Rogers. 2000. A meta-analysis of research on protection motivation theory. Journal of applied social psychology 30(2): 407-429

Gazley, Beth and Rachel Cash. (2023). “Nonprofit disaster response and climate change: Who responds? Who plans?” Forthcoming in Nonprofit Policy Forum.

Houser, Matthew, Beth Gazley, Heather Reynolds, Elizabeth Brennan Browning, Eric Sandweiss, and James Shanahan. 2022. Public support for local adaptation policy: The role of social-psychological factors, perceived climatic stimuli, and social structural characteristics. Global Environmental Change 72: 102424.

Kothe, Emily J., Mathew Ling, Madelon North, Anna Klas, Barbara A. Mullan& Lisa Novoradovskaya. 2019. Protection motivation theory and pro‐environmental behaviour: A systematic mapping review, Australian Journal of Psychology, 71:4, 411-432

Authors

• Beth Gazley, Indiana University

• Rachel Cash, Indiana University-Bloomington