Validation and Application of a Perception of Community Adaptive Capacity to Coastal Hazards Measure

Evaluating adaptive capacities that support the resilience of at-risk communities can be from an objective (top-down) approach or from a subjective (bottom-up) approach. While both approaches are valuable, there remains a need for quantitative subjective measures that complement objective measures by grounding understanding in community members’ perceptions and experiences. To address this need, a 12-item self-report assessment scale of community adaptive capacity to coastal hazards was developed and validated using data collected from two samples of Texas Gulf Coast residents. Findings support the psychometric validity and reliability of the measure and indicate that at-risk coastal communities in Texas can be meaningfully segmented using the measure. The perception of greater adaptive capacity, real, or otherwise, may ameliorate natural hazard concerns and inflate beliefs about preparedness. As such, subjective measures are important companions to objective measures of adaptive capacity and can offer opportunities to identify mismatches between top-down approaches to building adaptive capacity and community perceptions.