Does flood risk information held within at risk population always have a positive impact? An evaluation of the effects of French regulatory tools in Orleans

Abstract

French law on major risk preventive information for population setup the objective to make the citizen able to act for his own safety and to participate through his behaviour to the civil security. To reach this objective, the policymakers developed 4 regulatory tools that have to be implemented by the local authorities. These 4 tools do not meet the success factors of risk communication measures aiming at inducing behavioural adaptation to face risks. This, added to the fact that people who die in the last floods events in France lost their lives due to either a lack of knowledge of the risk or to a risk taking behaviour, led us to question the impact of the preventive information regulatory tools. For the needs of our study we developed a risk perception and behaviour scale, helping us to classify the people of our sample. Our evaluation in Orleans shows that very few people know the regulatory tools and that their impact is quite low, far from the policymakers’ expectations. This highlight the real necessity to innovate in the field of flood risk communication.