IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/masfgc/v27y2022i2d10.1007_s11027-021-09989-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The power of impact framing and experience for determining acceptable levels of climate change-induced flood risk: a lab experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Ambika Markanday

    (Basque Center for Climate Change (BC3))

  • Steffen Kallbekken

    (Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO))

  • Ibon Galarraga

    (Basque Center for Climate Change (BC3))

Abstract

This study explores how individuals, when assuming the role of policymakers, determine acceptable levels of risk in response to (a) different framings of flood risk information and (b) after experiencing economic losses from a hypothetical flood event in Zarautz (Basque Country, Spain). An incentivised lab experiment is conducted on a representative sample in the neighbouring region of Bilbao. A 2 × 2 factorial between-subject design is used to measure risk acceptability in response to visual and economic impact framings, and the effect of experience is measured using a 2-period repeated game within-subject design. Results from the experiment teach us that photos of climate impacts can be an effective medium for provoking visceral feelings about climate change. When used in conjunction with simple numerical risk information, photos can help the public to engage more deeply with climate issues and in turn encourage them to take precautionary measures to limit losses in the future. Experiencing economic losses leads to reductions in levels of acceptable risks, but decision-making is characterised by little emotional or logical reasoning, signalling a use of heuristics such as ‘gut impulse’, which may be prone to cognitive bias.

Suggested Citation

  • Ambika Markanday & Steffen Kallbekken & Ibon Galarraga, 2022. "The power of impact framing and experience for determining acceptable levels of climate change-induced flood risk: a lab experiment," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 1-18, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:masfgc:v:27:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1007_s11027-021-09989-8
    DOI: 10.1007/s11027-021-09989-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11027-021-09989-8
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11027-021-09989-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. van der Linden, Sander, 2014. "On the relationship between personal experience, affect and risk perception: the case of climate change," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 57689, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Carolyn Kousky, 2017. "Disasters as Learning Experiences or Disasters as Policy Opportunities? Examining Flood Insurance Purchases after Hurricanes," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(3), pages 517-530, March.
    3. Paul Slovic & Melissa L. Finucane & Ellen Peters & Donald G. MacGregor, 2004. "Risk as Analysis and Risk as Feelings: Some Thoughts about Affect, Reason, Risk, and Rationality," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 24(2), pages 311-322, April.
    4. Judy Lawrence & Dorothee Quade & Julia Becker, 2014. "Integrating the effects of flood experience on risk perception with responses to changing climate risk," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 74(3), pages 1773-1794, December.
    5. Martin L. Weitzman, 2009. "On Modeling and Interpreting the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(1), pages 1-19, February.
    6. Armin Falk & Anke Becker & Thomas Dohmen & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2023. "The Preference Survey Module: A Validated Instrument for Measuring Risk, Time, and Social Preferences," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(4), pages 1935-1950, April.
    7. Gerd Gigerenzer & Ralph Hertwig & Eva Van Den Broek & Barbara Fasolo & Konstantinos V. Katsikopoulos, 2005. "“A 30% Chance of Rain Tomorrow”: How Does the Public Understand Probabilistic Weather Forecasts?," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 25(3), pages 623-629, June.
    8. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    9. Joanne Harvatt & Judith Petts & Jason Chilvers, 2011. "Understanding householder responses to natural hazards: flooding and sea-level rise comparisons," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(1), pages 63-83, January.
    10. Saffron J. O'Neill & Nicholas Smith, 2014. "Climate change and visual imagery," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 5(1), pages 73-87, January.
    11. -, 2009. "The economics of climate change," Sede Subregional de la CEPAL para el Caribe (Estudios e Investigaciones) 38679, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    12. McDermott, T.K.J. & Surminski, S., 2018. "Normative interpretations of climate risk assessment and how it affects local decision making – a study at the city scale in Cork, Ireland," Working Papers 309607, National University of Ireland, Galway, Socio-Economic Marine Research Unit.
    13. Colin F. Camerer & Howard Kunreuther, 1989. "Decision processes for low probability events: Policy implications," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(4), pages 565-592.
    14. Wesley E Highfield & Sarah A Norman & Samuel D Brody, 2013. "Examining the 100‐Year Floodplain as a Metric of Risk, Loss, and Household Adjustment," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 33(2), pages 186-191, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sulehri, Fiaz Ahmad & Ali, Amjad, 2024. "Assessing the Pathways of Sustainable Development: A Structural Equation Modeling Investigation of Regulatory Framework, Innovation, and Economic Indicators," MPRA Paper 121286, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alan Berger & Case Brown & Carolyn Kousky & Richard Zeckhauser, 2011. "The Challenge of Degraded Environments: How Common Biases Impair Effective Policy," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(9), pages 1423-1433, September.
    2. Mona Ahmadiani & Susana Ferreira & Craig E. Landry, 2019. "Flood Insurance and Risk Reduction: Market Penetration, Coverage, and Mitigation in Coastal North Carolina," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 85(4), pages 1058-1082, April.
    3. Carmen Keller & Michael Siegrist & Heinz Gutscher, 2006. "The Role of the Affect and Availability Heuristics in Risk Communication," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(3), pages 631-639, June.
    4. Alexander H DeGolia & Elizabeth H T Hiroyasu & Sarah E Anderson, 2019. "Economic losses or environmental gains? Framing effects on public support for environmental management," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(7), pages 1-17, July.
    5. Bond, Craig A. & Iverson, Terrence, 2011. "Modeling Information in Environmental Decision-Making," Western Economics Forum, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 10(2), pages 1-17.
    6. Kjær, Trine & Nielsen, Jytte Seested, 2016. "An investigation into procedure (in)variance in the valuation of mortality risk reductions," DaCHE discussion papers 2016:4, University of Southern Denmark, Dache - Danish Centre for Health Economics.
    7. W. Botzen & J. Aerts & J. Bergh, 2013. "Individual preferences for reducing flood risk to near zero through elevation," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 229-244, February.
    8. Grechuk, Bogdan & Zabarankin, Michael, 2014. "Risk averse decision making under catastrophic risk," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 239(1), pages 166-176.
    9. van den Bergh, J.C.J.M. & Botzen, W.J.W., 2015. "Monetary valuation of the social cost of CO2 emissions: A critical survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 33-46.
    10. Gernot Wagner & Richard Zeckhauser, 2012. "Climate policy: hard problem, soft thinking," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 110(3), pages 507-521, February.
    11. Piacquadio, Paolo G., 2020. "The ethics of intergenerational risk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    12. W. Botzen & Jeroen Bergh, 2014. "Specifications of Social Welfare in Economic Studies of Climate Policy: Overview of Criteria and Related Policy Insights," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 58(1), pages 1-33, May.
    13. Elisa Cavatorta & David Schröder, 2019. "Measuring ambiguity preferences: A new ambiguity preference survey module," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 71-100, February.
    14. J. Farmer & Cameron Hepburn & Penny Mealy & Alexander Teytelboym, 2015. "A Third Wave in the Economics of Climate Change," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 62(2), pages 329-357, October.
    15. Randall, Alan, 2009. "We Already Have Risk Management - Do We Really Need the Precautionary Principle?," International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics, now publishers, vol. 3(1), pages 39-74, August.
    16. Simon Levin & Anastasios Xepapadeas, 2021. "On the Coevolution of Economic and Ecological Systems," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 13(1), pages 355-377, October.
    17. Steve Newbold & Charles Griffiths & Christopher C. Moore & Ann Wolverton & Elizabeth Kopits, 2010. "The "Social Cost of Carbon" Made Simple," NCEE Working Paper Series 201007, National Center for Environmental Economics, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, revised Aug 2010.
    18. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2014. "What Do We Learn from the Weather? The New Climate-Economy Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(3), pages 740-798, September.
    19. Matthias Schmidt & Hermann Held & Elmar Kriegler & Alexander Lorenz, 2013. "Climate Policy Under Uncertain and Heterogeneous Climate Damages," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 54(1), pages 79-99, January.
    20. Goytom Abraha Kahsay & Daniel Osberghaus, 2018. "Storm Damage and Risk Preferences: Panel Evidence from Germany," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 71(1), pages 301-318, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:masfgc:v:27:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1007_s11027-021-09989-8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.