Elsevier

Journal of Environmental Psychology

Volume 54, December 2017, Pages 116-126
Journal of Environmental Psychology

Threat, coping and flood prevention – A meta-analysis

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2017.08.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Meta-analysis of 35 studies applying Protection Motivation Theory to food preventive behavior.

  • Introduces the use of standardized regression coefficients as effect sizes.

  • Threat appraisal and coping appraisal are significant predictors of flood preventive behavior.

Abstract

In order to understand flood preventive intentions and behaviors in individuals, the research literature of the last decades has turned to the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT; Rogers, 1975, 1983) as a prominent framework. Yet a meta-analytical synthesis of these research results is still missing. The present meta-analysis combines correlation and regression coefficients reported from 35 single studies using 47 independent samples (N = 35,419). Data analysis shows that threat appraisal (r+ = 0.23) and coping appraisal (r+ = 0.30) are both significantly associated with flood preventive intentions/behaviors. Meta-analytical structural equation modeling (MASEM) indicates that flood-related emotions and trust in public institutions qualify as additional predictors, whereas past flood experiences qualify only as an indirect predictor. Overall, the extended PMT model explains 15% of variance in flood preventive intentions/behaviors. In relation to the effect size (ES) variability, meta-analytical ANOVAs confirm a moderating impact of the dependent variable (intention vs. behavior), and of the date of publication (before or after 2012). Implications for future research are discussed.

Introduction

Flooding inflicts severe costs on societies, especially on the rural inhabitants of developing countries where flood protection measures are mostly inadequate. Experts estimate that more than 700 million people worldwide (10% of the world's population) are currently prone to disastrous flooding. Between 1970 and 2010, this number increased by 114% (UNISDR, 2011). One example of the life-threatening potential of flooding was Typhoon Haiyan, killing more than 3900 people when it hit the Philippines in 2013. Flood-related economic losses are expected to rise drastically in the next years. For Europe, annual losses because of continental flooding are estimated to increase from currently €4.9 billion to €23.5 billion by 2050 (Jongman et al., 2014).

Estimates like these have fueled discussions concerning the effectiveness of traditional flood protection strategies and their focus on structural protection measures (dikes and levees): Although levees generally do reduce the risk of flooding, they also increase the potential flood damage when their defense fails (e.g. Lane, Landström, & Whatmore, 2011). The limitations of solely structural flood defense strategies (Johnson, Penning-Rowsell, & Tapsell, 2007) have initiated a shift towards more integrated flood risk management strategies (Bubeck et al., 2012b, European Commission, 2007; Kreibich, Bubeck, Van Vliet, & De Moel, 2015). Attributing greater responsibility to private households has been an important consequence of this development: While earlier strategies mainly held public authorities responsible for flood risk management, integrated strategies demand private households to play a more active role in protecting their life and property from flooding.

Calls for active participation of private households are based on studies that have demonstrated the effectiveness of flood preventive measures adopted by individual households. Such measures, including flood-adapted building, mobile flood barriers, or the securement of sources of contamination, can reduce the damages of household property up to 80 percent (Holub and Fuchs, 2008, Kreibich et al., 2015, Olfert and Schanze, 2008). Consequentially, private engagement in flood protection has become an important component of current risk management strategies (Bubeck et al., 2012a, Bubeck et al., 2012b). In many European countries policy directives now dictate that those endangered by flooding are obliged to undertake appropriate measures to reduce flood-related damages.

However, past survey studies indicate that even in flood prone areas most citizens are not ready to accept this responsibility (e.g. Krasovskaia, 2005, Kreibich et al., 2011, Terpstra, 2010). For example, the vast majority of interviewed participants in the Netherlands (85%) stated that they had hardly ever thought about their risk of flooding; 73% still considered the government to be primarily responsible for flood protection. Similarly, only 33% of surveyed households in Germany were aware that their building was located in a flood prone area. Finally, in a survey of 4000 residents in flood prone areas in Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the UK, more than 80 percent of the participants reported that they had not taken any precautionary measures and only a minority of the households judged such measures effective. Gaining a better understanding of the factors that motivate individuals to improve their flood preparedness has become an important scientific task.

Initially, most of the research in this field focused on the relationship between flood risk perceptions and (the uptake of) private flood preventive behaviors (e.g., Plapp & Werner, 2006). Yet empirical results only revealed weak or insignificant correlations between risk perceptions and the adoption of preventive measures, thus hinting at a more complex picture (cf. Bubeck, Botzen, et al., 2012; for a review). Grothmann and Reusswig (2006) demonstrated how a well-established psychological theory - Rogers’s (1983) Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) - could be used to increase our knowledge of the processes mediating the impact of flood risk perceptions on flood preventive intentions/behaviors. Following their research, a number of studies have investigated the psychological determinants of private flood protective action.

The goal of the paper at hand is to provide a meta-analytical synthesis of studies applying concepts derived from the PMT for flood-related research. While previous work has provided narrative reviews (Bubeck et al., 2012a, Kellens et al., 2013), a meta-analytical (i.e., quantitative) synthesis is - to the best of our knowledge - still missing. The present research aims at filling this gap. Our second, more method-related goal relates to the possible use of standardized regression coefficients as a substitute for not reported bivariate correlations. In the literature, this method is discussed as a strategy to increase the number of studies available for estimating the “true” population's effect sizes. The following section introduces the PMT and its applications. We continue by stating our hypotheses and the methods applied, especially the use of regression coefficients as correlation substitutes. Presentation of the results of bivariate random-effects meta-analyses and of meta-analytical structural equation models (MASEM) follow. In the last section, we discuss implications for future research.

Section snippets

Protection motivation theory

Initially, the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) was proposed as a framework for understanding the impact of fear appeals on (favorable) behavioral choices (Rogers, 1975, Rogers, 1983). Like other social-cognitive theories (e.g., theory of planned behavior), PMT is an expectancy-value theory. It states that people will jointly evaluate the likelihood of being exposed to a certain threat, the severity of that threat, and their ability to cope it (Fig. 1).

PMT focuses on four central constructs:

The present research

The aim of our meta-analysis is to provide a quantitative synthesis of the empirical research on PMT variables associated with individual flood preventive behavior. In line with the PMT we assume that both threat and coping appraisal underlie a person's intention to engage in flood preventive behaviors or her/his actual performance of such behaviors. However, reviewing the empirical evidence for this assumption is important because for one of the PMT components - threat appraisal - previous

Search strategy

Our systematic search finished in October 2016. We used two search strategies to ensure a comprehensive literature review: First, four databases were searched for keywords, titles, and abstracts (Web of Science, SCOPUS, PsycINFO, Google Scholar). Different keyword combinations (e.g., [“flooding” AND “Protection Motivation Theory”]) yielded 770 records. Second, forward and backward searches were performed by searching the reference lists of key papers and review articles (e.g., Bubeck et al.,

Results of the data extraction process

We initially identified a total of 221 possibly eligible papers. Closer inspection of these papers revealed that 35 out of 221 studies (including 47 independent samples) reported empirical data with regard to the association of at least two constructs targeted in our meta-analysis. The 47 independent samples comprised a total of N = 35,419 participants (harmonic mean sample size N = 298). Due to the fact that many studies used the same sample to calculate correlations for different types of

Discussion and conclusion

The aim of the present meta-analysis is to provide a quantitative synthesis of the research conducted (since the 1990s) on the significance of PMT constructs in predicting flood preventive intentions/behaviors. We are - to the best of our knowledge - the first to investigate predictors of individual flood protection behaviors by means of a meta-analysis.

Acknowledgements

We thank the two reviewers and the editor for their fair and constructive comments that helped us improve the quality of the manuscript.

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