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The Role of Community Perceptions and State Assessments in Individual Flood Risk Perceptions

Sat, August 8, 4:00 to 5:00pm, TBA

Abstract

How individuals perceive the magnitude of local hazards and their own susceptibility influences their participation in disaster risk reduction (DRR) and mitigation. While numerous studies have examined factors shaping individuals’ perceptions of disaster risk, less attention has been paid to how broader characterizations of disaster risk- such as official designations and community-level collective perceptions- influence individual views. In this paper, we address this gap by combining survey data from 414 New Orleans residents with additional data sources to examine how FEMA flood designations and community perceptions of flood risk are associated with whether individuals identify their neighborhood as one of the most flood-prone areas in the city. Further, we assess whether the association between community perceptions and individual perceptions of flood risk is moderated by respondents’ educational attainment and the proportion of vacant housing. Our results indicate that community perceptions of flood risk have a statistically significant positive association with individual perceptions, whereas FEMA flood delineations do not. Moreover, this association is statistically significant only among respondents with a college degree or higher. Finally, this association is weaker in neighborhoods with higher proportions of vacant housing. Our findings illustrate that individual risk perceptions are shaped more strongly by collective local narratives than by technical assessments. They also show that these social transmissions of risk assessments are contingent on individual and community advantage.

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