Do climate change knowledge and risk perceptions drive flood preparedness? Evidence from New Orleans
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-12-2026
Publication Title
Climate Risk Management
Abstract
How do residents perceive increasing climate risks, and how do these perceptions translate into risk mitigation behaviors? Research has largely overlooked whether residents in flood-prone areas attribute household preparedness to their perceptions of climate change. To address this gap, we employ a survey of residents from New Orleans, Louisiana, to study how two important factors: (1) perceived knowledge and (2) risk perceptions of climate change, are associated with adopting eight flood preparedness measures, encompassing structural and non-structural measures. Regression analysis shows that feeling more informed about climate change is associated with a greater likelihood of adopting flood preparedness measures in general, and with adopting some, but not all, structural and non-structural measures. By contrast, perceptions of climate change risk are less associated. Structural preparedness measures are also influenced by socio-demographic factors, particularly age, prior flood-damage experience, and home ownership, but, importantly, this is not the case for non-structural measures. We then use seemingly unrelated estimation techniques to examine whether social and demographic attributes explain the associations among climate change knowledge, risk perceptions, and flood preparedness. Results show that prior flood experience partially explains the positive relationship between perceived climate change knowledge and flood preparedness. Overall, our findings suggest that perceived climate knowledge influences preparedness actions, consistent with an experiential learning mechanism in which direct flood-damage experience fosters a lived understanding of climate change. From a policy perspective, our study suggests that interventions tailored to specific forms of preparedness may be more effective at motivating household-level preparedness than a one-size-fits-all approach.
Volume
53
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Jayasinghe, Naduni; Brown, Vincent M.; Smiley, Kevin T.; and Keim, Barry D., "Do climate change knowledge and risk perceptions drive flood preparedness? Evidence from New Orleans" (2026). School of Public Health Faculty Publications. 603.
https://digitalscholar.lsuhsc.edu/soph_facpubs/603
10.1016/j.crm.2026.100852