Collaborative Research: The Temporal Dynamics of Household Flood Adjustment Behaviors

This study addresses a longstanding issue in our understanding of hazard adjustment decisions: what pushes individuals thinking about hazard adjustment to adopt these adjustments? To address this question, the research team employs a longitudinal survey design to understand the mechanisms that lead to adjustment behaviors over time. By addressing this issue, emergency managers and other key stakeholders can create programs that reduce risk by targeting barriers to adopting hazard adjustment behaviors. The team leverages these insights by co-developing a toolkit to support local and state efforts to improve flood adjustment program design, participant experiences, and community outcomes. The project also provides an opportunity for experiential learning and graduate student training. The findings are transferable to other locations affected by natural and induced technological hazards. This project builds on Paton’s Social-Cognitive Preparation Model to examine how people develop expectations, intentions, and behaviors related to flood hazard adjustments over a 3-year period. The research team surveys households living in coastal areas within 100-year flood zones. The survey introduces an experimental intervention to measure how flood hazard adjustment behaviors change after participants receive a brochure on flood hazard protections. The study also uses advanced statistical methods such as Structure Equation Modeling and Latent Growth Curve Mediation Modeling to analyze how different factors influence people’s flood hazard adjustment decisions, as well as how behavioral intentions and actual behaviors change over six time points across 3 years. This study extends beyond typical one-time or short-term surveys by tracking how intentions to adopt flood adjustments translate into actual behaviors over time. The research model is transferable to understand drivers that affect protection behaviors across different types of hazards, cultures, and places. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.