The impact of flood management policies on individual adaptation actions: insights from a French case study

Abstract

Floods can be managed at the collective and individual level. Knowing the interaction between measures taken at both scales can help design more efficient flood risk management policies. Here, we combine the data collected during a survey of 331 inhabitants of flood-prone areas in the South of France and spatial databases to empirically examine the interaction between individual adaptation measures and three types of collective management tools: a national insurance scheme, dikes, and zoning instruments. In line with the levee effect hypothesis, we found that dike protection reduces the probability to have or take individual adaptation measures and that this effect could be mitigated by zoning instruments. Moreover, we found that the national insurance scheme does not crowd out individual adaptation.