The Impacts of Natural Disasters on Population Outflow: Focusing on the Flood

Abstract

As natural disasters become more complex, larger in scale, and unpredictable, the urgency and importance of developing strategic national and local spatial planning has grown to cope with climate change and natural disasters. While there is a growing interest in disaster adaptation and mitigation in Korea, population migration caused by natural disasters has not drawn much attention in field of disaster prevention. Against this backdrop, this study attempts to test if the occurrence of natural disasters has caused populations to migrate using a panel analysis and also if natural disasters' impacts are heterogeneous across cities given their different characteristics. A net change in population is used as a dependent variable, while data on human and property loss due to natural disasters are used as independent variables with other control variables. Results from the analysis confirm that the impact of natural disasters on population outflow is statistically significant. In particular, an increase in human loss increases population outflow, and its impact is greater in declining cities. The results provide empirical grounds for the necessity of spatial planning when considering natural disasters.