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Differential residential perspectives on in situ protection and retreat as strategies for climate adaptation

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Abstract

The growing cost of climate-driven coastal impacts requires an improved understanding of how coastal populations engage with adaptation decisions. While many studies explore factors driving coastal adaptation, generally, few evaluate how residents consider relationships between in situ, protective adaption vs. retreat from at-risk areas. What is the relationship between residents’ exposure, perceptions of climate trends, and concerns about the future? How do these factors influence openness to different adaption strategies? Are these strategies considered to be progressive—where protection is indexed to minor threats and retreat occurs when protection measures fail—or are these dichotomous choices? We apply structural equation modeling to evaluate these decision pathways using a 2017 household survey in North Carolina’s (USA) Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula (n = 147). Our results reveal that residents commonly view protection and retreat as mutually exclusive, rather than progressive, methods for reducing risk, and that their preferences are correlated with different understandings of climate threats.

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Funding

This paper is based upon work graciously supported by the US National Science Foundation under Coastal SEES Grant No. 1427188 and Geography and Spatial Sciences Grant No. 1660450. This research was approved under UNC IRB #16-1107 and all experiments comply with the current laws of the USA.

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  1. Department of City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB #3140, New East Building, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599-3140, USA

    Nora Louise Schwaller & Todd K. BenDor

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  1. Nora Louise Schwaller
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Correspondence to Nora Louise Schwaller.

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Schwaller, N.L., BenDor, T.K. Differential residential perspectives on in situ protection and retreat as strategies for climate adaptation. Climatic Change 167, 42 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-021-03055-7

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