Willingness of households to reduce flood risk in southern France Victor Champonnois, Katrin Erdlenbruch To cite this version: Victor Champonnois, Katrin Erdlenbruch. Willingness of households to reduce flood risk in southern France. Journal of Flood Risk Management, Wiley, In press, pp.e12696. 10.1111/jfr3.12696. hal- 03155331 HAL Id: hal-03155331 https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-03155331 Submitted on 1 Mar 2021 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - NoDerivatives| 4.0 International License Received: 16 April 2020 Revised: 14 November 2020 Accepted: 16 December 2020 DOI: 10.1111/jfr3.12696 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Willingness of households to reduce flood risk in southern France Victor Champonnois1 | Katrin Erdlenbruch1,2 1G-EAU, INRAE, AgroParisTech, Cirad, IRD, Institut Agro, University of Abstract Montpellier, Montpellier, France This article analyses the scope for individual adaptation to flood risk in the 2CEE-M, University of Montpellier, South of France. We collected data concerning the implementation of individ- CNRS, INRAE, Institut Agro, Montpellier, ual adaptation measures and the willingness to pay for individual and collec- France tive measures in a survey of 418 respondents living in two flood-prone areas. Correspondence First, we observed the current level of adaptation and compared the willing- Katrin Erdlenbruch, G-EAU, INRAE, ness to pay for individual versus collective measures. We then analysed the AgroParisTech, Cirad, IRD, Institut Agro, University of Montpellier, 361 rue Jean drivers of implementation and of willingness to pay. We then provide a cost– François Breton, 34196 Montpellier Cedex benefit analysis of individual adaptation. The survey results show that, despite 5, France. Email: [email protected] willingness to pay for reduced risk, few adaptation measures have been implemented. Perceptions of hazards and of damage are important drivers but Funding information have different influences: the first favours the implementation of measures; Agence Nationale de la Recherche, Grant/ – Award Number: ANR-17-CE39-0011; the second increases willingness to pay for measures. Finally, our cost benefit Fondation MAIF analysis suggests that completely dry proofing a house up to a height of one metre may not be economically viable. This calls for the promotion of cheaper and more cost-efficient measures. KEYWORDS contingent valuation, cost–benefit analysis, damage mitigation, dichotomous choice, flood, France, individual adaptation, willingness to pay 1 | INTRODUCTION Christenberger, & Schwarze, 2011; Kreibich, Thieken, Petrow, Müller, & Merz, 2005). We refer to these as indi- Floods are considered the main natural hazard in France, vidual adaptation measures (Erdlenbruch & Bonté, 46% of municipalities being at risk. Among available risk- 2018; Richert, Boisgontier, & Grelot, 2019; Richert, reduction tools, household adaptations have received Erdlenbruch, & Grelot, 2019 as opposed to collective mit- increased attention in recent decades. Measures, such as igation measures.1 This article investigates people's will- erecting flood barriers, installing electrical fittings higher ingness to reduce flood risks at the household level. We in walls, and protecting valuables (e.g., upstairs), appear analyse the implementation of measures and assess will- to be effective and relatively low-cost options (Bubeck, ingness to pay (WTP) for further measures. Our study Botzen, & Aerts, 2012; Bubeck, Botzen, Kreibich, & produced three main results: first, the level of investment Aerts, 2012; Bubeck, Botzen, Suu, & Aerts, 2012; in individual adaptation is low and is mainly Kreibich, Bubeck, Van Vliet, & De Moel, 2015; Kreibich, implemented by those who have already experienced a This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. © 2021 The Authors. Journal of Flood Risk Management published by Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. J Flood Risk Management. 2021;e12696. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jfr3 1of16 https://doi.org/10.1111/jfr3.12696 2of16 CHAMPONNOIS AND ERDLENBRUCH flood. Second, the number of protest votes against private or relying on government assistance, as discussed in Kun- participation in flood protection was significant. Third, reuther (2006). Other concerns included the cost, the aes- even among the non-protest voters, the WTP for private thetics, and the belief that flood protection should be precautionary measures is not enough to cover the cost. provided by the state (Kazmierczak & Bichard, 2010; This result contrasts with many findings in the literature. Owusu et al., 2015), as well as feeling protected by collec- Our results highlight the particularity of the French tive flood mitigation (Richert, Boisgontier, & vision of disaster risk reduction. Grelot, 2019; Richert, Erdlenbruch, & Grelot, 2019). A vast literature has focused on the determinants Whether there is a general demand for more individual of individual adaptation measures. For example, adaptation measures and for policies to broaden their Osberghaus (2015) conducted a nation-wide study of implementation (Grothmann & Reusswig, 2006; Owusu 4,200 households in Germany and found that adaptations et al., 2015) can be tested through stated preference such as appropriate use of buildings, structural measures methods. and flood barriers tended to be applied when individuals Stated preference methods, particularly contingent had experienced flooding and believed that worse dam- valuation (Carson, 2012; Johnston et al., 2017), have been age would occur in the future due to climate change. used to assess a variety of collective flood-mitigation pol- Direct experience was also found to be important icy approaches (Champonnois, 2018; Champonnois & in several other smaller case studies, (e.g., Grothmann Chanel, 2016; Chanel, Chichilnisky, Massoni, & & Reusswig, 2006; Richert, Erdlenbruch, & Vergnaud, 2016; Glenk & Fischer, 2010; Kuo, 2016). Figuières, 2017). Bubeck, Botzen, and Aerts (2012) and Indeed, WTP may express a monetary benefit (increased Bubeck, Botzen, Kreibich, and Aerts (2013) stressed the land-use value) or other benefit (reduced anxiety and importance of coping appraisal as a determinant of adap- community disruption), as discussed in Thunberg and tation decisions2 in line with other studies based on the Shabman (1991). For example, Champonnois and Cha- protection motivation theory (Grothmann & nel (2016) used contingent valuation to estimate French Reusswig, 2006; Reynaud, Aubert, & Nguyen, 2013; households' WTP for a collective flood-protection sce- Richert et al., 2017). For instance, in a survey of 752 Ger- nario and an insurance scenario. They found mean a man households exposed to flood risk along the River WTP of 93 euros for the collective scenario and 100 euros Rhine, Bubeck, Botzen, and Aerts (2012) and Bubeck for the insurance scenario (with maximum values at et al. (2013) showed that “self-efficacy” was a significant 1,500 and 1,300 euros, respectively). factor in the implementation of structural measures and Valuation studies of the benefits of individual adapta- flood barriers, and that “response efficacy” was signifi- tion are rare (Botzen et al., 2009a, 2009b; Kazmierczak & cant in explaining the implementation of flood-adapted Bichard, 2010; Kuo, 2016; Owusu et al., 2015). use of buildings and flood barriers, whereas risk percep- Kazmierczak and Bichard (2010) estimated WTP for indi- tion played a minor role. Bubeck, Botzen, Suu, and vidual adaptation measures in flood-prone areas in Aerts (2012) studied risk perception as a factor in deci- England. They found median WTP values of less than sions to adapt by distinguishing between perceived prob- £100 (although 10% of the respondents were willing to ability and perceived consequences. They showed that pay more than £1,000). Moreover, they found no signifi- both are weak predictors of the intention to implement cant difference in WTP between people who had already measures. Interestingly, they found that the variable been flooded and those who had not. Owusu et al. (2015) “perceived consequences” was a strong predictor of the studied WTP for individual adaptation measures in Scot- demand for flood mitigation policies in general. Finally, land among households living in flood-prone areas. They several studies underlined the importance of socio- reported slightly lower means for those who had previ- demographic variables, such as home ownership, educa- ously been flooded (£734) than for those who had never tion and income (e.g., Grothmann & Reusswig, 2006; been flooded (£834). The main determinants of a WTP Richert et al., 2017). for flood-mitigation policies found in the literature are Although individual adaptation measures can be cost income, home-ownership,