Participatory Flood Risk Management and Environmental Sustainability: The Role of Communication Engagement, Severity Beliefs, Mitigation Barriers, and Social Efficacy

Climate change has continued to cause severe coastal flooding, erosion, and storm surge in the northeastern U.S. region. Compounding the coastal storm challenge, this region also experienced multiple 1-in-100-, 1-in-200-, and 1-in-500-year rainfall events in 2024. In recent years, community-based flood risk management has become an important component for generating locally viable mitigation strategies to build environmental sustainability. At the heart of this community engagement paradigm is flood risk communication, which aims to bring together community stakeholders to strengthen their social resilience to collaborate in generating flood risk management solutions. Extant research has rarely examined the direct connection between theory-driven risk communication factors and community-based flood risk management. To better understand the role of risk communication in facilitating participatory flood risk management planning, this study integrated risk communication constructs with the relevant Health Belief Model components to propose and test a conceptual framework. Specifically, this study conducted a survey with 302 residents of a coastal community highly vulnerable to sea level rise, storm surge, and year-round flooding in the coastal region of northeastern U.S. Study results suggested that flood information exposure could drive greater perceived flood risk severity and mitigation barriers, in addition to furthering flood risk information-seeking behavior and affiliated community-engaged flood risk communication. Community-engaged communication was positively linked to perceived social efficacy beliefs in tackling flood risk management, aside from being linked to perceived flood risk mitigation response efficacy. Both perceived social efficacy and response efficacy in flood risk management positively predicted interest in participatory flood risk management planning.