Understanding and Expanding the Role of Personal and Household Behavior in Climate Change Adaptation

Abstract

Climate change is already affecting humans’ day-to-day lives. Climate change threatens people’s physical and mental health, where they can live, as well as their homes and communities. Many environmental hazards existed before climate change, but climate change has worsened many of these threats, particularly for people who are already experiencing other environmental stressors such as pollution and deteriorating infrastructure. Individuals will respond and are already responding to climate change impacts, but they may do so in a way that has immediate, personal benefits but harms their future selves, other people, or environmental quality. This dissertation presents first steps for understanding personal and household climate change adaptation behavior, a topic which has not been deeply explored by researchers to date. Personal and household adaptation behavior refers to actions that individuals can take in their day-to-day lives to address the impacts of climate change on themselves and their households. My goals were to understand first, which specific behaviors might meet this definition, and second, how those behaviors might be supported. Rather than prescribe one behavior that all individuals should do, I explore what options are available and how an individual or organization can decide what behaviors are the best fit for what they want to achieve. I identified eight major types of personal and household adaptation behavior that have been named in the literature: civic engagement, consumption, psychological coping, household protection, learning, lifestyle change, migration, and self-protection. These behaviors consist of actions that one can take internally (i.e., coping, learning), actions that one can take for personal protection (i.e., household protection, self-protection, and migration), and actions to support social and environmental change (i.e., consumption, civic engagement, lifestyle change). To determine what behaviors might be helpful, or adaptive, in responding to climate change, first, it is important to consider both what specific impacts are being addressed (e.g., flooding, heat waves, or drought) and what outcomes are desired (e.g., reducing household damage or increasing community cohesion). An adaptive behavior both responds to that specific impact and supports that desired outcome. Organizations’ activities to support individuals in taking on adaptive behaviors are called interventions. These interventions can change what opportunities are available for individuals to act (i.e., structural interventions), or activate factors related to an individual’s motivation to act (i.e., informational interventions), or both (i.e., cross-cutting interventions). These potential interventions may take a variety of forms. In the U.S., these practices have included resilience hubs (structural interventions) virtual reality simulations of climate impacts (information interventions), and home flooding buyouts (cross-cutting interventions). Interviews with practitioners who conduct these interventions, however, revealed that many of them do not link their activities to behavior in an explicit or strategic way. As a result, adaptation behaviors researchers and practitioners are missing key insights from each other’s work. This dissertation represents an important first step in understanding personal and household behavior and lays groundwork for expanding its role in adaptation research and practice. Based on this research, future scholars will be able to better measure both what adaptation behaviors individuals are carrying out, and how those behaviors might change, so that individuals and communities can survive and thrive in the face of climate change.