Flood preparedness : thoughts, feelings and intentions of the Dutch public

Despite the high levels of flood protection in the Netherlands, absolute safety is not guaranteed. Preparing Dutch society for potential flood disasters, including the preparedness of individual citizens, is one of the great challenges in future flood risk management. This thesis is aimed at increasing the understanding of citizens’ intentions in flood preparation. Knowledge of the determinants of citizens’ behavioural intentions is indispensable for developing well-founded, effective risk communication that is aimed at facilitating citizens’ flood preparedness decisions. To study those behavioural intentions, we have adopted the Protective Action Decision Model (PADM, Lindell & Perry, 2000, 2004) which provides a social-psychological perspective on how people decide whether or not to prepare for disasters. This thesis contains four studies. These studies draw from the data that have been collected in three questionnaire surveys that were performed in flood risk areas along the Dutch coast, branches of the rivers Rhine and Meuse, and Lake Marken.