Fight or flight : experiences with river flooding in the Netherlands.

Abstract: The earth's climate has changed rapidly in recent decades. This will have far-reaching consequences for low-lying countries such as the Netherlands. Sensitivity to warnings about river flooding is crucial in order to deal with climate change risks adequately and to motivate people to cope with such risks. Our focus is on the role of prior experience with river floods on cognitive/affective responses to future flooding risks as well as residents intentions to cope with these risks. In a survey among 516 households living near the rivers Rhine and Meuse, households with different river flooding experiences were compared: being (a) flooded and evacuated, (b) flooded, (c) evacuated, (d), threatened, and (e) controls. As predicted, results showed that households with past flooding experience had higher threat appraisal and a stronger intention to protect one's property by using flood-defense devices (e.g., sandbags) in the future than did controls. Households that were flooded and evacuated also showed a stronger intention to evacuate furniture and self compared to controls and households that were flooded in the past. Structural equation modeling with multiple groups was used to predict the intention to take different risk coping strategies from cognitive risk evaluations and negative affect. Consistent with Protection Motivation Theory, path analyses showed that the simultaneous effects of threat and coping appraisal predicted the different coping strategies across groups. Importantly, the affective/cognitive model of persuasion explained less variance in the different coping strategies for residents with disaster experience compared to controls. It is suggested that a differential approach in persuasive risk communication should be developed for residents with disaster experience.