Abstract
This study assesses the dollar benefit of a neighborhood approach intervention on disaster risk reduction in small-sized, densely populated, and hazard-prone informal settlements across Latin American and Caribbean countries. We use a life satisfaction approach that assigns a dollar value to gains in wellbeing associated with the neighborhood approach intervention. Our primary data was a survey to a sample of 349 beneficiaries from small towns in Haiti, Guatemala, and Jamaica, and in major cities’ surrounded areas of Peru, Colombia, and Honduras. Out of 14 interventions, we found that community empowerment, physical works in public spaces and urban gardens/food approaches produced a gain of USD1,038 to USD1,241 to individual beneficiaries. Our study suggests a large benefit associated with the neighborhood approach intervention. It also shows that the life satisfaction approach is a promising method for the valuation of non-market and public goods, especially for countries where data on hazards and risks is not available to help monetize risk reductions.
Highlights
Governments and humanitarian agencies strategize disaster risk reduction (DRR) interventions at multiple levels when confronting the various risks and vulnerabilities prevalent in hazard prone urban informal settlements
Our goal was to estimate the contribution of each of the 14 Neighborhood Approach (NA) project elements (Pj) on the gain in subjective well-being (SWB) associated to the overall NA intervention, and assign a dollar value to each project element based on the Life Satisfaction Approach (LSA)
We used a novel methodological approach that identified the individual contribution of multiple elements of the NA intervention and assigned a dollar value to each element based on the LSA
Summary
Governments and humanitarian agencies strategize disaster risk reduction (DRR) interventions at multiple levels when confronting the various risks and vulnerabilities prevalent in hazard prone urban informal settlements. The interventions are often interwoven with development projects to achieve short-term gains in quality of life and long-term improvements in safety for the vulnerable at-risk communities. While these comprehensive interventions have the potential to improve the welfare of the communities, the methodological approaches to value their benefits are challenging. The complexity of the evaluation impact arises from the number of project elements implemented, and their multidimensional impacts that span social, economic, and environmental benefits. Standard economic methods to value these interventions, such as stated and revealed preference methods, are expensive and have several problems that limit its use [1,2,3].
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