Flood Risk Perception and Its Attributes among Rural Households under Developing Country Conditions: The Case of Pakistan

Abstract

Managing and communicating flood risks necessitates a strong understanding of how people perceive risk. It has become critical to examine risk perception to implement effective disaster risk management (DRM) measures. Socioeconomic determinants have an impact on risk perception, which in turn affects future adaptive capacity and disaster preparedness. First and foremost, this research attempts to determine how Pakistani people in rural areas perceive flood risk, and second, to examine the factors that can influence rural residents’ perceptions of flood risk. The data for this study were collected through face-to-face interviews with 600 respondents (household heads) from Charsadda and Nowshera districts that were severely affected by the 2010 flood. A flood risk perception index was developed (using a risk matrix) using relevant attributes on a Likert scale and classified into two categories: high and low perceived risk. Furthermore, a binary regression model was used to examine the influence of socioeconomic and institutional factors on rural households’ risk perception. Flood risk was perceived by 67 percent of the total sampled participants in the study regions. The results of binary logistic regression demonstrate that flood risk perception is strongly linked to socioeconomic variables such as age, education, house ownership, family size, past flood experience, and distance from the nearest river source, as well as institutional factors such as access to credit and extreme weather forecast information. The findings of the current study additionally revealed that flood risk perception varied among household heads based on education (1–10 years perceived high flood risk (51.47%)), age (age greater than 40 years perceived high flood risk (52.83%)), and monthly income levels (lower monthly income group perceived high flood risk (73.02%)). The findings of this study shed light on rural households’ perception of flood risk and the factors that shape such perceptions. These findings can assist provincial and local disaster management authorities in better understanding flood risk and adopting local actions that could be used to respond to flood and other climate-related disasters.

Do first responders and populations perceive risks similarly? A comparative study of seven countries

“…The differences within countries, and the variability in the gaps between the countries, in the risk perceptions of the general population, compared to first responders, support previous studies which claimed that first responders, as a specific professional group, differ from the general public regarding specific demographic characteristics (Brown et al, 2021;Kollmann et al, 2022;Shah et al, 2022) or personality traits (Al-Dahash et al, 2022). The contribution of the discussion made in this study is in connecting these gaps with additional possible explanations, such as different policies in the various countries, the relative focus given for each type of emergency, and the frequency of events.…”

“…Different risk perceptions may stem from varied factors including demographic characteristics (such as age, gender, and socio-economic status) ( Brown et al, 2021 ; Kollmann et al, 2022 ; Shah et al, 2022 ); personality traits (such as ways of coping with stressful situations, views concerning fate versus control of events; leadership qualities) ( Al-Dahash et al, 2022 ); cultural and social contexts (for example, local values and norms, or trust in data and in the authorities) ( Renn and Rohrmann, 2000 ; Cori et al, 2022 ); assorted beliefs (such as religion, level of religiosity, fears, political or other attitudes) ( Grima et al, 2021 ; Siegrist et al, 2021 ); as well as familiarity or knowledge about the hazard ( Al-Dahash et al, 2022 ). The Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF) suggests that the interaction between psychological, cultural, social, and contextual factors, and the characteristics of the adversities, impact the risk perception and consequently, also influence protective behavior ( Knuth et al, 2014 ).…”

Assessment of Rural Flood Risk and Factors Influencing Household Flood Risk Perception in the Haut-Bassins Region of Burkina Faso, West Africa

“…Therefore, we concluded that these factors should not be considered in the ordered logit regression. Other studies also found only insignificant effects of socioeconomic factors, including education, occupation and income, on flood risk perception [62,[65][66][67].…”

Assessment of Rural Flood Risk and Factors Influencing Household Flood Risk Perception in the Haut-Bassins Region of Burkina Faso, West Africa

“…However, a higher risk perception when accompanied by a low coping appraisal, can lead people to avoid taking protective actions against the risk, which is referred to as fatalism [31]. Many studies have been conducted in the context of flood perception risk elsewhere in different parts of the world [16,[35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42].…”