Abstract
Research on collective resilience processes still lacks a detailed understanding of psychological mechanisms at work when groups cope with adverse conditions, i.e., long-term processes, and how such mechanisms affect physical and mental well-being. As collective resilience will play a crucial part in facing looming climate change-related events such as floods, it is important to investigate these processes further. To this end, this study takes a novel holistic approach by combining resilience research, social psychology, and an archeological perspective to investigate the role of social identity as a collective resilience factor in the past and present. We hypothesize that social identification buffers against the negative effects of environmental threats in participants, which increases somatic symptoms related to stress, in a North Sea region historically prone to floods. A cross-sectional study (N = 182) was conducted to analyze the moderating effects of social identification on the relations between perceived threat of North Sea floods and both well-being and life satisfaction. The results support our hypothesis that social identification attenuates the relationship between threat perception and well-being, such that the relation is weaker for more strongly identified individuals. Contrary to our expectations, we did not find this buffering effect to be present for life satisfaction. Future resilience studies should further explore social identity as a resilience factor and how it operates in reducing environmental stress put on individuals and groups. Further, to help communities living in flood-prone areas better cope with future environmental stress, we recommend implementing interventions strengthening their social identities and hence collective resilience.
Highlights
Floods are stressful events for any affected population and threaten the very fabric of their shared existence
Considering the intensification of future devastating climate change-related flood events (CRED and UNDRR 2020), there is some urgency in gaining comprehensive knowledge of collective resilience factors facilitating a population’s physical and mental well-being, and in turn, the willingness to stay in flood-prone areas
Of specific interest was to explore the role of social identification in collective resilience processes and how it contributes to the physical and mental well-being in areas threatened by sea floods
Summary
Floods are stressful events for any affected population and threaten the very fabric of their shared existence. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration defines a storm surge as “the abnormal rise in seawater level during a storm, measured as the height of the water above the normal predicted astronomical tide” (NOAA 2020) and depending on “the orientation of the coastline with the storm track; the intensity, size, and speed of the storm”, they can be a very destructive and deadly natural event (NOAA 2020). Such a special and dynamic landscape shapes the local ways of life eternally, with Brinckerhoff Jackson Such a special and dynamic landscape shapes the local ways of life eternally, with Brinckerhoff Jackson (1984, p. 8) noting: Landscape is not a natural feature of the environment but a synthetic space, a man-made system of spaces superimposed on the face of the land, functioning and evolving not according to the natural laws but to serve a community - for the collective character of the landscape is one thing that all generations and all points of view have agreed upon. [...] A landscape is a space deliberately created to speed up or slow down the process of nature
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