Disrupting the Complacency: Disaster Experience and Emergent Environmentalism

Abstract

As climate change intensifies, scholars are beginning to ask whether firsthand experience with disaster will cause complacent people to develop greater environmental concern and engage in more proenvironmental behaviors. Will the disruption caused by experiencing a local environmental disaster be enough to motivate residents to change their values and behaviors? The aim of this study is to answer that question by analyzing qualitative interview data collected from 40 residents of Calgary, Alberta, who survived the devastating and costly 2013 southern Alberta flood. Despite normally high levels of climate change denial and complacency, findings indicate that the flood prompted residents to concern themselves more with climate change and the climate crisis and to begin adopting many household-level proenvironmental behaviors. The findings also point to important gender differences in both environmental concern and proenvironmental behaviors. Thus, the article establishes a social-psychological process of attitudinal and behavioral change, allowing us to better understand how jarring environmental events disrupt complacency.