A Flood disaster in the Netherlands: a trade-off between paying for protection and undertaking action?

Effectively, one of the principal challenges for the Netherlands in the face of climate change is: How should we manage flood risk so that regional needs are adequately captured? Recent studies however point at the existing gap between risk perceptions of the public and the experts, which seems to become an apple of discord in the Dutch flood management. While public authorities are not willing to emphasize the growing threats that flooding are posing to the country, the issue is pressing hard to be addressed.
In this paper we offer a summary of a recent study on flood risk perceptions in the Netherlands that precludes the findings regarding the willingness to pay for (public) measures contrasted to taking (individual) protective action. Clearly, arising debates around the issue of public-private (shared) responsibility in addressing flood risk add more fuel to the fire, where views seem to be polarized. We attempt thus to link this variation in behavioural intention to the willingness to pay for improvements in flood safety and explore the nature of this relationship. We observe in addition that regional differences do matter, which has direct implications for policy and practice. In particular, we suggest that measures tailored to serve local needs and attuned to local perceptions should prove to provide most feasible solutions.