Abstract
Flooding represents one of the most significant natural hazards affecting households globally, yet risk communication efforts frequently fail to translate into protective behaviour. This dissertation synthesises existing literature to investigate why households ignore flood-risk advice and identifies messaging strategies that effectively promote adaptive behaviour. Through systematic analysis of peer-reviewed research, this study reveals that households commonly dismiss flood warnings when messages appear irrelevant, evoke fear without providing actionable guidance, or present adaptation measures as prohibitively expensive or ineffective. Conversely, evidence demonstrates that communication succeeds when it explains local threat dynamics, presents specific measures with clear effectiveness data, employs participatory formats, and utilises trusted messengers within social networks. The findings strongly support anchoring communication strategies in Protection Motivation Theory, emphasising coping appraisal alongside threat information. This synthesis contributes to flood risk management scholarship by identifying evidence-based principles for campaign design, including audience segmentation, repeated tailored messaging, and integration of funding pathways. The conclusions hold significant implications for policymakers, emergency managers, and communication practitioners seeking to enhance household flood preparedness in an era of increasing climate-related hazards.
Introduction
Flooding constitutes the most widespread and economically damaging natural hazard worldwide, affecting millions of households annually and causing billions of pounds in damages (UNDRR, 2022). Climate change projections indicate that flood frequency and intensity will increase substantially across many regions, rendering effective household-level preparedness increasingly critical (IPCC, 2021). Despite substantial investment in flood risk communication programmes, evidence consistently demonstrates a troubling gap between awareness and action: households frequently receive, acknowledge, and subsequently ignore advice designed to protect their lives and property.
This disconnect between communication and behaviour represents more than an academic curiosity; it carries profound practical consequences. When households fail to implement protective measures—whether structural adaptations such as flood barriers, or non-structural responses such as emergency planning—they remain unnecessarily vulnerable to flood impacts. The economic, social, and psychological costs of flood damage extend far beyond immediate property losses, encompassing displacement, mental health deterioration, community disruption, and long-term economic hardship (Environment Agency, 2021).
Understanding why risk communication fails, and identifying what works instead, therefore represents a matter of urgent scholarly and practical importance. Traditional approaches to flood risk communication have typically employed one-way, top-down dissemination of generic information through brochures, websites, and public announcements. These approaches assume a linear relationship between information provision and behavioural change—an assumption that behavioural science has thoroughly discredited (Forsyth, Roberts and Brewer, 2023). Households do not simply lack information; rather, complex psychological, social, and economic factors mediate their responses to risk communication.
Recent decades have witnessed significant advances in understanding these mediating factors, drawing upon theoretical frameworks from psychology, communication studies, and behavioural economics. Protection Motivation Theory, in particular, has emerged as a dominant framework for understanding how individuals process threat information and decide whether to adopt protective behaviours (Rogers, 1983; Babcicky and Seebauer, 2019). This theory emphasises that effective communication must address both threat appraisal—perceptions of vulnerability and severity—and coping appraisal—beliefs about response efficacy, self-efficacy, and response costs.
Despite these theoretical advances, a persistent gap exists between research knowledge and communication practice. Many flood risk communication programmes continue to employ approaches that research has shown to be ineffective, whilst evidence-based strategies remain underutilised (Dillenardt et al., 2024). This dissertation addresses this gap by synthesising current evidence on flood risk communication effectiveness, with the explicit aim of identifying actionable principles for campaign design.
The significance of this research extends across multiple domains. Academically, it contributes to ongoing theoretical debates about risk perception, communication effectiveness, and the psychology of protective behaviour. Practically, it provides evidence-based guidance for emergency managers, local authorities, and communication practitioners. Socially, it addresses a critical challenge in building community resilience to climate-related hazards. As flooding events become more frequent and severe, the imperative to bridge the gap between risk communication and protective behaviour becomes ever more pressing.
Aim and objectives
Aim
This dissertation aims to synthesise existing evidence to explain why households ignore flood-risk advice and to identify the messaging characteristics that effectively promote adaptive behaviour.
Objectives
To achieve this aim, the following specific objectives guide this research:
1. To identify and analyse the key psychological, social, and practical barriers that prevent households from acting upon flood-risk communication.
2. To evaluate the evidence regarding specific messaging features and communication strategies that successfully promote household-level flood preparedness and adaptation.
3. To examine how theoretical frameworks, particularly Protection Motivation Theory, can inform the design of effective flood risk communication campaigns.
4. To synthesise practical implications and evidence-based recommendations for communication practitioners, policymakers, and emergency managers.
5. To identify gaps in current knowledge and propose directions for future research in flood risk communication.
Methodology
This dissertation employs a literature synthesis methodology, systematically analysing peer-reviewed research to address the stated aim and objectives. Literature synthesis represents an appropriate methodological approach when the research question concerns understanding patterns across multiple studies rather than generating new primary data (Grant and Booth, 2009). Given the substantial body of existing research on flood risk communication, synthesis enables identification of consistent findings, theoretical integration, and practical recommendations that individual studies cannot provide.
The literature selection process prioritised peer-reviewed journal articles published in reputable outlets, including journals focused on natural hazards, risk management, environmental science, and behavioural research. Sources were evaluated for methodological rigour, relevance to the research questions, and recency, with particular attention to studies published within the past decade to ensure currency of findings. The research summary provided the foundation for this synthesis, supplemented by additional high-quality sources from government agencies, international organisations, and established academic institutions.
The analytical approach involved thematic analysis of the identified literature, grouping findings according to the research objectives. Barriers to communication effectiveness were categorised according to their nature—psychological, social, economic, or communication-related. Evidence regarding effective messaging features was organised according to specific communication characteristics, enabling identification of consistent patterns across diverse study contexts and methodologies.
Studies included in this synthesis employed various methodological approaches, including surveys, experimental designs, agent-based modelling, Q-methodology, and pre-post intervention studies. This methodological diversity strengthens the synthesis by enabling triangulation of findings across different research paradigms. However, it also necessitates careful attention to the limitations and boundary conditions of individual studies when drawing generalised conclusions.
The geographical scope of included studies encompasses multiple countries, including Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom, Vietnam, Thailand, India, and Spain. This international perspective enables identification of communication principles that transcend specific national contexts whilst acknowledging that cultural, institutional, and hazard-specific factors may moderate the effectiveness of particular approaches.
Limitations of this methodology must be acknowledged. Literature synthesis depends upon the quality and availability of existing research, potentially overlooking important phenomena that have received insufficient scholarly attention. Publication bias may result in overrepresentation of positive findings regarding communication effectiveness. Additionally, the complexity of real-world flood risk communication may resist simple generalisation, as effectiveness depends upon numerous contextual factors that vary across settings.
Literature review
Theoretical foundations of flood risk communication
Understanding why flood risk communication succeeds or fails requires grounding in established theoretical frameworks. Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) has emerged as the dominant theoretical lens for analysing household responses to flood risk information (Rogers, 1983). PMT posits that protective behaviour results from two cognitive appraisal processes: threat appraisal, encompassing perceived vulnerability and severity; and coping appraisal, encompassing response efficacy, self-efficacy, and response costs.
Crucially, PMT suggests that high threat appraisal alone does not motivate protection; rather, individuals must also believe that effective responses exist, that they can implement these responses, and that costs are manageable. Research has confirmed that coping appraisal factors often exert stronger influence on flood adaptation behaviour than threat factors alone (Babcicky and Seebauer, 2019; Weyrich et al., 2020). This insight carries profound implications for communication design, suggesting that fear-based messaging emphasising threat without addressing coping may prove counterproductive.
Babcicky and Seebauer (2019) provided particularly important theoretical refinement by demonstrating separate protective and non-protective routes in flood mitigation behaviour. Their research revealed that threat appraisal and coping appraisal can operate independently, with non-protective responses such as denial and wishful thinking emerging when coping appraisal is insufficient to match perceived threat levels. This finding underscores the importance of balancing threat and coping information in communication design.
Beyond PMT, scholars have drawn upon additional theoretical frameworks including the Theory of Planned Behaviour, the Health Belief Model, and risk perception research traditions (Wachinger et al., 2013). These frameworks share emphasis on the multidimensional nature of risk perception and the importance of perceived behavioural control in motivating action. Together, they establish that effective risk communication must address not merely awareness but the full range of psychological factors that mediate between information receipt and behavioural response.
Barriers to communication effectiveness
The literature identifies multiple categories of barriers that prevent flood risk communication from achieving its intended effects. These barriers operate at psychological, social, economic, and communication design levels, frequently interacting in ways that compound their impact.
Perceived irrelevance and low personal risk
Perhaps the most fundamental barrier involves households failing to recognise their own properties as at risk. Research consistently demonstrates that many households in objectively flood-prone areas do not perceive themselves as personally vulnerable (Rollason et al., 2018; Attems et al., 2020a; Davids and Thaler, 2021). This perception may stem from lack of direct flood experience, optimistic bias, or attribution of flood risk to government responsibility rather than personal concern.
Rollason et al. (2018) found that households often view floods as rare events unlikely to affect them personally, leading them to discard risk communication materials as irrelevant. This finding highlights the challenge of communicating probabilistic risks in ways that feel personally meaningful. Abstract statistics about flood return periods fail to translate into felt vulnerability, enabling households to maintain comfortable distance from an ostensibly distant threat.
Threat without coping options
Communications that raise fear or awareness without providing practical coping information frequently backfire, triggering defensive psychological responses rather than protective action. Rollason et al. (2018) identified that threat-focused messaging can provoke denial, wishful thinking, or message avoidance rather than the intended protective behaviour. Similarly, Haer, Botzen and Aerts (2016) found through agent-based modelling that risk-only communication proved less effective than coping-focused approaches.
This pattern aligns closely with PMT predictions regarding the importance of coping appraisal. When individuals perceive high threat but low coping efficacy, they may resort to maladaptive responses including denial, fatalism, or problem avoidance. Babcicky and Seebauer (2019) documented this phenomenon empirically, demonstrating that insufficient coping information activates non-protective psychological routes.
Low perceived efficacy and high costs
Even when households understand their risk and know what measures exist, they frequently doubt that these measures would effectively reduce their vulnerability or perceive implementation costs as prohibitive. Dillenardt et al. (2024) found that perceived effectiveness and cost concerns represent critical barriers to property-level adaptation to pluvial flooding. Households may possess accurate risk perceptions and knowledge of available measures yet fail to act because they doubt the measures would work or cannot afford implementation.
Dillenardt and Thieken (2025) further explored this barrier across different flood types, finding that efficacy concerns vary according to the specific nature of flooding faced. Pluvial flooding from heavy rainfall, for instance, may be perceived differently from fluvial flooding from river overflow, with implications for how efficacy information should be communicated.
One-way, generic communication
The dominant paradigm of flood risk communication—top-down dissemination of generic information through mailings, websites, and public documents—reaches and influences only a minority of at-risk households. Forsyth, Roberts and Brewer (2023) analysed conceptual barriers to household flood preparedness and found that traditional communication approaches rarely align with behavioural theory or user information needs. Materials frequently employ technical language, assume prior knowledge, and fail to address the specific concerns of diverse household types.
Attems et al. (2020a) employed Q-methodology to examine homeowner opinions in flood-prone Austrian areas, revealing substantial diversity in information needs and preferences that generic communications cannot address. Similarly, Maidl and Buchecker (2015) found that while communication campaigns can raise risk preparedness, effectiveness varies substantially according to message design and delivery method. One-way communication fails to build the engagement, dialogue, and social connection that appear necessary for translating awareness into action.
Mistrust and role expectations
Complex relationships between trust and protective behaviour further complicate communication effectiveness. Seebauer, Seebauer and Babcicky (2017) examined trust in different messenger types—local governments, volunteers, and neighbours—and found paradoxical effects. High trust in government can actually reduce private adaptation by reinforcing expectations that authorities should manage flood risk, thereby diminishing perceived personal responsibility. Conversely, trust in volunteers was associated with increased risk perception and reduced denial.
Attems et al. (2020a) similarly found that institutional trust influences how households interpret and respond to risk information. When households trust that government flood defences will protect them, they may discount messages encouraging private adaptation as unnecessary. This finding suggests that trust, while generally valuable, can interact with role expectations in ways that undermine communication effectiveness.
Effective messaging characteristics
Against this backdrop of barriers, the literature identifies specific messaging features associated with successful behavioural outcomes. These features address the psychological, social, and practical barriers identified above, providing evidence-based guidance for communication design.
Explaining local threat dynamics
Communication that explains when and how flooding occurs in specific local contexts proves more effective than generic threat information. Rollason et al. (2018) advocated for rethinking flood risk communication to emphasise locally relevant explanations of flood processes. When households understand the specific mechanisms through which their properties might flood—whether from river overflow, surface water accumulation, or drainage failures—they develop both heightened risk perception and enhanced sense of control over the situation.
Bodoque et al. (2019) employed a pre-post survey design to evaluate flash flood risk communication in Spain, finding that explaining local threat dynamics significantly enhanced both risk perception and awareness of mitigation actions. Participants who received locally contextualised information about flood processes showed greater subsequent engagement with protective measures.
Showing specific measures with effectiveness and costs
Strong evidence supports the importance of communicating not merely that protective measures exist, but providing specific information about their effectiveness and implementation costs. Dillenardt et al. (2024) found that when response efficacy and manageable costs are clearly communicated, property-level adaptation increases substantially. This finding aligns with PMT emphasis on coping appraisal as a critical driver of protective behaviour.
Binh et al. (2020) conducted experimental research on risk communication and flood mitigation in Vietnam, demonstrating that coping-focused communication emphasising specific protective measures outperformed risk-only approaches. Similarly, Weyrich et al. (2020) developed a flood-risk-oriented dynamic protection motivation framework showing that communication must address both what to do and why doing so will be effective.
Coping-focused risk communication
The distinction between risk-only and coping-focused communication emerges as a central theme in the literature. Binh et al. (2020) provided experimental evidence that communication emphasising coping strategies—what households can do to protect themselves—produces greater behavioural change than communication emphasising risk alone. Haer, Botzen and Aerts (2016) reached similar conclusions through agent-based modelling, demonstrating that coping-focused strategies generate more sustained protective behaviour across simulated populations.
This evidence strongly supports rebalancing communication away from threat emphasis toward coping emphasis. While threat information remains necessary to establish relevance and motivation, excessive threat focus without corresponding coping information may trigger the defensive responses documented by Babcicky and Seebauer (2019).
Tailoring to property and flood type
Tailored, people-centred communication tools that address specific property characteristics and flood types prove more effective than generic approaches, though primarily among already aware audiences. Attems et al. (2020b) examined the influence of tailored risk communication on adaptive behaviour, finding that personalised information addressing specific household circumstances triggered more adaptation than standardised materials.
Maidl and Buchecker (2015) similarly found that tailored communication raised preparedness more effectively than generic campaigns. However, both studies noted important boundary conditions: tailoring proved most effective among households who already possessed some awareness and engagement with flood risk. For completely disengaged populations, tailoring alone may be insufficient without additional strategies to establish initial relevance.
Davids and Thaler (2021) explored smart tools for encouraging adaptive behaviour through public-private interaction, emphasising that technology-enabled personalisation can enhance communication effectiveness when combined with appropriate engagement strategies.
Interactive, participatory formats
Moving beyond one-way communication toward interactive, participatory formats emerges as consistently important across the literature. Forsyth, Roberts and Brewer (2023) advocated for dialogue-based approaches that build engagement and address individual concerns. Meyer and Johann (2025) analysed insights from German homeowners following the catastrophic 2021 floods, finding that communication featuring dialogue and participation influenced adaptive behaviour more effectively than passive information receipt.
Attems et al. (2020a) found that participatory approaches build what might be termed flood literacy—understanding not merely of risks but of personal capacity to respond. Lin (2025) examined participatory flood risk management and found that communication engagement enhanced social efficacy alongside individual motivation. Bodoque et al. (2019) similarly emphasised the value of interactive formats in enhancing both risk perception and mitigation awareness.
Trusted messengers and social networks
The messenger delivering flood risk communication significantly influences its reception and impact. Seebauer, Seebauer and Babcicky (2017) demonstrated that volunteers in emergency services can increase risk perception and reduce denial more effectively than government sources, likely because they avoid triggering dependency expectations. Haer, Botzen and Aerts (2016) modelled the influence of social networks on communication effectiveness, finding that peer-to-peer transmission amplifies behavioural uptake.
Lindell, Arlikatti and Huang (2019) analysed immediate behavioural responses to flash flooding in India, finding that social network structure influenced information reception and response. Prathumchai and Bhula-Or (2020) examined household perceptions during the 2011 Thailand floods, similarly identifying social networks as crucial channels for risk communication effectiveness.
These findings suggest that communication strategies should identify and engage trusted local messengers rather than relying exclusively on official channels. Volunteers, community leaders, and respected neighbours may prove more effective communicators than government officials, particularly in contexts where institutional trust is limited.
Audience segmentation and message matching
Recognising that households vary in their readiness to adopt protective measures and in the specific measures most relevant to their circumstances, research supports segmenting audiences and matching messages to segment characteristics. Weyrich et al. (2020) developed a framework for understanding how different household segments respond to different message emphases—severity versus costs, for instance.
Weyrich (2020) further elaborated principles for matching communication to decision-making stages, emphasising that households at early stages of awareness require different messages than those already motivated but facing practical barriers. This approach aligns with broader behaviour change literature emphasising stage-matched interventions.
The practical implication is that effective campaigns cannot employ single messages for all audiences. Rather, communication programmes should identify distinct audience segments based on current readiness, relevant flood types, and property characteristics, then design targeted messages addressing the specific barriers and motivations most relevant to each segment.
Discussion
The synthesised evidence reveals a coherent picture of why flood risk communication frequently fails and what principles guide successful approaches. This discussion critically analyses these findings in relation to the stated objectives and their broader implications.
Understanding communication failure
The first objective sought to identify barriers preventing households from acting upon flood risk communication. The evidence identifies multiple interacting barriers operating at psychological, social, economic, and communication design levels. Perceived irrelevance, inadequate coping information, efficacy doubts, generic messaging, and complex trust dynamics all contribute to the gap between communication and behaviour.
What emerges most clearly is that communication failure typically reflects not information deficits but failure to engage with the full psychology of protective behaviour. Traditional approaches assumed that providing information about risk would motivate action—a fundamentally flawed assumption that ignores the complexity of human decision-making. Households do not simply lack information; they lack personally relevant information that addresses their specific concerns, doubts, and practical constraints.
The prominence of coping appraisal factors in determining behaviour carries particular significance. When households receive threat information without corresponding coping information, they may experience heightened anxiety without increased protection. Indeed, the evidence suggests this combination can trigger counterproductive defensive responses including denial and avoidance. This finding fundamentally challenges fear-based approaches to risk communication that emphasise threat intensity as the primary motivational mechanism.
Evidence for effective messaging
The second objective evaluated evidence regarding messaging features that promote household adaptation. The literature identifies a consistent set of effective characteristics: local specificity, concrete measures with clear effectiveness, coping emphasis, tailored delivery, interactive formats, and trusted messengers.
These characteristics share underlying logic: they address the barriers identified in the literature by making risk personally relevant, providing actionable guidance, building confidence in response effectiveness, and engaging households through credible channels. Effective communication works not by overwhelming households with threat information but by building the cognitive and practical resources necessary for protective action.
The importance of interactive, participatory formats deserves particular emphasis. One-way dissemination of generic information—the dominant communication paradigm—consistently underperforms relative to approaches that enable dialogue, address individual concerns, and build relationship and engagement. This finding has significant resource implications, as participatory approaches require greater investment than mass communication, but the evidence suggests this investment yields substantially better outcomes.
The role of trusted messengers similarly challenges conventional practice. Government agencies typically lead flood risk communication, yet evidence suggests that volunteers, community members, and social networks may prove more effective channels. This finding does not suggest that government should withdraw from communication but rather that communication strategies should deliberately engage trusted local actors as intermediaries.
Theoretical integration
The third objective examined how theoretical frameworks can inform communication design. Protection Motivation Theory emerges as the most relevant and well-supported framework, providing explicit guidance for message construction. PMT indicates that effective communication must address threat appraisal—establishing that flooding represents a real and serious risk to the specific household—whilst ensuring that coping appraisal is equally strong.
The empirical evidence consistently supports this theoretical prescription. Research demonstrating the superiority of coping-focused over risk-only communication directly validates PMT predictions. The findings regarding efficacy concerns and cost perceptions similarly align with PMT emphasis on response efficacy and response costs as determinants of behaviour.
Babcicky and Seebauer’s (2019) refinement identifying separate protective and non-protective routes provides additional theoretical precision. This finding suggests that communication design must carefully calibrate threat and coping information to avoid triggering non-protective responses. Simply increasing threat emphasis without corresponding coping enhancement may prove not merely ineffective but actively counterproductive.
Practical implications for campaign design
The fourth objective sought to synthesise practical recommendations. The evidence supports several concrete principles for communication design:
First, campaigns should anchor messages in Protection Motivation Theory, systematically addressing coping appraisal alongside threat information. This means that every communication raising awareness of flood risk should also provide specific, actionable guidance about protective measures, evidence of their effectiveness, and information about costs and support available.
Second, audience segmentation should guide message design. Different household segments—distinguished by prior awareness, property type, relevant flood hazards, and current adaptation status—require different message emphases. Campaigns should identify these segments and design targeted communications addressing segment-specific barriers and motivations.
Third, communication should be locally specific rather than generic. Explaining how floods occur in specific localities, identifying which properties face which risks, and showing local examples of successful adaptation all enhance relevance and impact.
Fourth, interactive, participatory formats should complement or replace one-way dissemination where resources permit. Community meetings, co-production processes, and dialogue-based engagement build the flood literacy and social efficacy that passive information receipt cannot achieve.
Fifth, campaigns should identify and engage trusted messengers within target communities. Volunteers, community leaders, and respected neighbours may carry more credibility than official sources, particularly where institutional trust is limited.
Sixth, repeated, sustained communication proves more effective than single-point campaigns. Behaviour change typically requires multiple exposures, building awareness over time and maintaining salience during periods between flood events.
Seventh, communication should integrate with practical support mechanisms. Providing information about protective measures has limited impact if households lack access to funding, technical advice, or implementation support. Effective campaigns connect information to resources.
Limitations and considerations
The fifth objective required identifying knowledge gaps and future research directions. Several limitations of current evidence deserve acknowledgment.
Most studies examine relatively affluent contexts in Europe and North America, raising questions about generalisability to low-income countries facing the most severe flood impacts. Cultural factors, institutional contexts, and resource constraints likely moderate communication effectiveness in ways that current evidence does not fully capture.
Methodological diversity across studies complicates synthesis and comparison. Survey-based studies, experimental designs, and modelling approaches each carry distinct limitations, and inconsistent measurement of key constructs hinders cumulative knowledge development.
The relationship between communication and behaviour remains complex and context-dependent. Effective messaging in one context may prove ineffective in another due to cultural differences, hazard characteristics, institutional arrangements, or population characteristics. The principles identified in this synthesis should be understood as general guidelines requiring local adaptation rather than universal prescriptions.
Long-term behavioural maintenance receives limited attention in current research. Most studies examine immediate or short-term responses to communication, but sustained protective behaviour over years and decades matters most for flood resilience. Understanding how to maintain behaviour between flood events represents a significant knowledge gap.
Finally, the interaction between communication and structural flood management deserves greater attention. Communication that encourages private adaptation may interact in complex ways with public infrastructure investment, insurance systems, and land-use planning. Understanding these system-level interactions should inform communication strategy development.
Conclusions
This dissertation has synthesised evidence regarding why households ignore flood risk advice and what messaging approaches effectively promote adaptive behaviour. The findings address each stated objective whilst revealing broader insights relevant to flood risk management and risk communication scholarship.
Regarding the first objective, households ignore flood risk advice when it feels irrelevant to their personal circumstances, raises fear without providing coping guidance, or presents protective measures as ineffective or unaffordable. These barriers reflect not simply information deficits but fundamental features of human psychology that traditional communication approaches have failed to address.
Regarding the second objective, messaging changes behaviour when it explains local threat dynamics, presents specific measures with clear effectiveness and cost information, emphasises coping alongside threat, employs tailored and interactive formats, and reaches households through trusted messengers and social networks.
Regarding the third objective, Protection Motivation Theory provides robust theoretical grounding for communication design, emphasising the critical importance of coping appraisal factors including response efficacy, self-efficacy, and response costs. Communication that neglects these factors in favour of threat emphasis alone risks triggering counterproductive defensive responses.
Regarding the fourth objective, practical recommendations for campaign design include anchoring messages in PMT, segmenting audiences and matching messages to segment characteristics, ensuring local specificity, employing participatory formats, engaging trusted messengers, sustaining communication over time, and integrating information provision with practical support mechanisms.
Regarding the fifth objective, future research should examine communication effectiveness in diverse global contexts, investigate long-term behavioural maintenance, develop consistent measurement approaches, and explore system-level interactions between communication and structural flood management.
The significance of these findings extends beyond academic contribution. As climate change increases flood frequency and severity, effective household-level preparation becomes ever more critical for reducing damages, protecting lives, and building community resilience. The evidence synthesised here provides actionable guidance for policymakers, emergency managers, and communication practitioners seeking to bridge the persistent gap between risk communication and protective behaviour.
Ultimately, this synthesis demonstrates that flood risk communication can work—but only when designed according to evidence-based principles rather than intuitive assumptions. Generic, fear-based, one-way communication fails not because households are irrational but because such approaches fail to engage with the legitimate psychological, social, and practical factors that mediate between information receipt and behavioural response. Communication that is locally specific, coping-focused, interactive, and delivered through trusted channels has demonstrated capacity to shift real preparedness behaviour. The challenge now lies in translating this evidence into practice at scale.
References
Attems, M., Schlögl, M., Thaler, T., Rauter, M. and Fuchs, S., 2020a. Risk communication and adaptive behaviour in flood-prone areas of Austria: A Q-methodology study on opinions of affected homeowners. *PLoS ONE*, 15. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233551
Attems, M., Thaler, T., Snel, K., Davids, P., Hartmann, T. and Fuchs, S., 2020b. The influence of tailored risk communication on individual adaptive behaviour. *International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction*. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.101618
Babcicky, P. and Seebauer, S., 2019. Unpacking Protection Motivation Theory: evidence for a separate protective and non-protective route in private flood mitigation behavior. *Journal of Risk Research*, 22, pp. 1503-1521. https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2018.1485175
Binh, P., Zhu, X., Groeneveld, R. and Ierland, E., 2020. Risk communication, women’s participation and flood mitigation in Vietnam: An experimental study. *Land Use Policy*, 95, pp. 104436. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.104436
Bodoque, J., Díez-Herrero, A., Amérigo, M., García, J. and Olcina, J., 2019. Enhancing flash flood risk perception and awareness of mitigation actions through risk communication: A pre-post survey design. *Journal of Hydrology*. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2018.11.007
Davids, P. and Thaler, T., 2021. Flood-Resilient Communities: How We Can Encourage Adaptive Behaviour Through Smart Tools in Public–Private Interaction. *Urban Planning*. https://doi.org/10.17645/up.v6i3.4246
Dillenardt, L., Bubeck, P., Hudson, P., Wutzler, B. and Thieken, A., 2024. Property-level adaptation to pluvial flooding: An analysis of individual behaviour and risk communication material. *Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change*, 29. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11027-024-10148-y
Dillenardt, L. and Thieken, A., 2025. Individual flood risk adaptation in Germany: exploring the role of different types of flooding. *Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences*. https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-25-3257-2025
Environment Agency, 2021. *Flood and coastal erosion risk management: an investment plan for 2021 to 2027*. Bristol: Environment Agency.
Forsyth, W., Roberts, T. and Brewer, G., 2023. Conceptualising Risk Communication Barriers to Household Flood Preparedness. *Urban Governance*. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ugj.2023.02.001
Grant, M.J. and Booth, A., 2009. A typology of reviews: an analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies. *Health Information and Libraries Journal*, 26(2), pp. 91-108.
Haer, T., Botzen, W. and Aerts, J., 2016. The effectiveness of flood risk communication strategies and the influence of social networks-Insights from an agent-based model. *Environmental Science & Policy*, 60, pp. 44-52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2016.03.006
IPCC, 2021. *Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lin, C., 2025. Participatory Flood Risk Management and Environmental Sustainability: The Role of Communication Engagement, Severity Beliefs, Mitigation Barriers, and Social Efficacy. *Sustainability*. https://doi.org/10.3390/su17072844
Lindell, M., Arlikatti, S. and Huang, S., 2019. Immediate behavioral response to the June 17, 2013 flash floods in Uttarakhand, North India. *International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction*. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2018.11.011
Maidl, E. and Buchecker, M., 2015. Raising risk preparedness by flood risk communication. *Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences*, 15, pp. 1577-1595. https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-15-1577-2015
Meyer, H. and Johann, G., 2025. Insights From Homeowners on the Impact of Flood Risk Communication on Adaptive Behavior at the Property Level From the 2021 Flood Event in Germany. *Journal of Flood Risk Management*, 18. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfr3.70038
Prathumchai, K. and Bhula-Or, R., 2020. Understanding Households’ Perceptions of Risk Communication During a Natural Disaster: A Case Study of the 2011 Flood in Thailand. *Journal of Disaster Research*, 15, pp. 621-631. https://doi.org/10.20965/jdr.2020.p0621
Rogers, R.W., 1983. Cognitive and physiological processes in fear appeals and attitude change: A revised theory of protection motivation. In: J. Cacioppo and R. Petty, eds. *Social Psychophysiology*. New York: Guilford Press, pp. 153-177.
Rollason, E., Bracken, L., Hardy, R. and Large, A., 2018. Rethinking flood risk communication. *Natural Hazards*, 92, pp. 1665-1686. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-018-3273-4
Seebauer, S., Seebauer, S. and Babcicky, P., 2017. Trust and the communication of flood risks: comparing the roles of local governments, volunteers in emergency services, and neighbours. *Journal of Flood Risk Management*, 11, pp. 305-316. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfr3.12313
UNDRR, 2022. *Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2022*. Geneva: United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
Wachinger, G., Renn, O., Begg, C. and Kuhlicke, C., 2013. The risk perception paradox—implications for governance and communication of natural hazards. *Risk Analysis*, 33(6), pp. 1049-1065.
Weyrich, P., 2020. *To act or not to act: Warning communication and decision-making in response to weather-related hazards*. Doctoral thesis. Zurich: ETH Zurich. https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000404058
Weyrich, P., Mondino, E., Borga, M., Di Baldassarre, G., Patt, A. and Scolobig, A., 2020. A flood-risk-oriented, dynamic protection motivation framework to explain risk reduction behaviours. *Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences*, 20, pp. 287-298. https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-287-2020
