Abstract
A growing focus is being placed on both individuals and communities to adapt to flooding as part of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030. Adaptation to flooding requires sufficient social capital (linkages between members of society), risk perceptions (understanding of risk), and self-efficacy (self-perceived ability to limit disaster impacts) to be effective. However, there is limited understanding of how social capital, risk perceptions, and self-efficacy interact. We seek to explore how social capital interacts with variables known to increase the likelihood of successful adaptation. To study these linkages we analyze survey data of 1010 respondents across two communities in Thua Tien-Hue Province in central Vietnam, using ordered probit models. We find positive correlations between social capital, risk perceptions, and self-efficacy overall. This is a partly contrary finding to what was found in previous studies linking these concepts in Europe, which may be a result from the difference in risk context. The absence of an overall negative exchange between these factors has positive implications for proactive flood risk adaptation.
Highlights
Flooding is the most prominent natural hazard due to its large impacts at both the social and individual level, which are predicted to continue growing globally (IPCC 2014)
Higher risk perceptions lead to a higher probability of undertaking action to control the threat (Kraus and Slovic 1988); these two findings overlap with research on Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) and social capital
The respondents answered four questions related to their flood risk perceptions that were combined as one variable to increase the comparability to Babcicky and Seebauer (2017)
Summary
Flooding is the most prominent natural hazard due to its large impacts at both the social and individual level, which are predicted to continue growing globally (IPCC 2014). O’Keefe et al (1976) argue that an increasing trend in disasters was caused mostly by the growing vulnerability of people rather than by changes in nature This is based on the arguments presented in White (1945) in that a range of adjustments to human behavior and action was required instead of a focus on controlling water to limit flood risk. We believe that we contribute to the literature by increasing the range of topics studied in Vietnam, where research has focused on understanding flood damage (Chinh et al 2016) This is important because the existing literature has tended to focus on samples from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) countries (Bubeck et al 2012; Bamberg et al 2017; van Valkengoed and Steg 2019). The preceding literature in WEIRD countries may not be readily generalizable without additional research (Henrich et al 2010) like ours
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