Public Favors Building Barriers Over Moving Away: Evidence from Flood Adaptation Choices in the U.S. and Germany
Based on Freihardt, J., Buntaine, M. T., & Bernauer, T. (2024). Choosing to protect: public support for flood defense over relocation in climate change adaptation. Environmental Research Letters, 19(10), 104012. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ad6781/meta
Across nationally representative samples in the U.S. and Germany, the public shows a strong preference for flood protection infrastructure over relocation policies, even when relocation could reduce long-term costs.
The Policy Problem
As climate change accelerates, communities worldwide face mounting threats from rising temperatures, sea level rise, and increasingly severe floods, underscoring the urgent need for substantial investments in adaptation. Among these hazards, floods stand out for their devastating impacts on lives, infrastructure, and economies, and require costly measures to reduce their impact. Policymakers are increasingly confronted with a difficult choice: whether to continue investing in costly flood protection infrastructure that enables communities to remain in place, or to promote managed relocation from high-risk areas to safer ground. While infrastructures like levees, embankments, and floodwalls can help protect existing settlements, the general public might oppose these measures if they require substantial public spending but benefit relatively few people. Managed relocation, by contrast, may offer a more sustainable and cost-effective long-term strategy, but it poses major political and social challenges. This has created a pressing policy challenge for flood adaptation governance worldwide: how closely do policymakers and the public align in allocating scarce resources between protection and relocation, and do public preferences support managed retreat when it may be the more cost-effective option?
Key Findings and Proposed Solutions
Across the U.S. and Germany, respondents in nationally representative surveys tasked with allocating funding for flood adaptation among hypothetical communities strongly favored funding protective infrastructure rather than relocation incentives, even in areas facing frequent floods.
When allocating limited adaptation funds, the number of lives at risk influenced public choices far more than potential economic or property losses.
Public priorities did not align with economic efficiency, suggesting that people value community preservation and protection more than cost-effectiveness.
Support for protective measures was highest among homeowners and those not personally exposed to flood risk, indicating that direct experience with floods moderate preferences.
These preferences highlight a major political obstacle for implementing managed retreat or relocation strategies, even when such policies may be more cost-effective and sustainable in the long term.