Anne van Valkengoed: Adaptation behaviour is about more than just risks

The PBL (Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving), or Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency) released a report on 14 May titled “Climate Risks in the Netherlands: The current state of affairs”.

In a press release, the PBL explained that the report (which produced with input from experts from Dutch knowledge institutes Deltares, KNMI, KWR, NIPV, RCE, RIVM, TNO, WEnR and WUR) was the product of recognizing the urgency to adapt to climate change as its effects are already being felt in the Netherlands:

“Climate adaptation is not a stand-alone policy, but should be guiding policies such as spatial policy, housing policy, nature policy and agricultural policy”, the PBL press release reads. “Due to the intensive use of space in the Netherlands, climate adaptation often affects many aspects of society. Adaptations to climate change are therefore often complex and require overarching, structural choices by politics and policy.”

Behaviour change not explicitly identified

While the report identifies behaviour change as relevant to preventing different climate change risks, its importance is not explicitly identified within the overall adaptation strategy.

In our 2019 paper, “Climate change adaptation by individuals and households: A psychological perspective”, Linda Steg and I identified three reasons why climate adaptation by individuals and households is crucial (and how it relates to and supplements government responses):

1. First, due to the increases in climate-related hazards, governments will become overstrained in their capacity to adequately respond to these hazards.
2. Second, adaptation actions by households are effective to reduce the negative impacts of climate-related risks and are relatively cost-efficient to implement.
3. Third, the adaptive actions of individual citizens can influence the effectiveness of governmental adaptation policies.

Adaptation can take different forms

The PBL report goes on to make clear that adaptation can take many different forms. One section about ways that Dutch citizens can adapt their behaviour to decrease their health risks lists a broad range of actions people can take:

• planning your day to be indoors during the hottest periods
• checking that natural bodies of water are not contaminated (i.e. blue-green algae) before going swimming
• getting rid of stagnant water around your house to avoid mosquitos
• protecting your skin
• checking for tick bites
• skin protection against UV exposure
• dealing with hay fever

The list goes on, and is far from exhaustive: we could add many more examples within the health domain alone! That doesn’t even include measures for drought management, flood protection, and other weather extremes exacerbated by climate change.

Double-edged sword

Naming so many options to consider could actually be a double-edged sword: it may seem useful to show people all the ways they can take action to adapt, but it is a challenge for policy makers to promote such a wide array of different behaviours.

Traditionally, behaviour change campaigns tend to be very focused and tailored to one specific behaviour to enhance their effectiveness, so it is unclear if this approach is still feasible and appropriate for adaptation.

The PBL report pays special attention to the mental health risks of climate change, including climate anxiety specifically, but suggests that not much is yet known about this problem.

Climate anxiety is relevant

As a matter of fact, after surveying Dutch climate professionals, I found that climate-related mental health stress could be particularly relevant for employees working on environmental/climate topics.

My findings were published in an article, titled “Eco-stress among environmental professionals”, in Milieu (Environment) magazine. The results showed that roughly 25 percent of those surveyed regularly experienced extreme levels of stress symptoms (both physical and mental) because of their concern for the environment.

Adaptation behaviour isn’t predicted by risk perception

Perhaps most importantly, the report emphasizes that risk perception is a key factor for how people respond to climate change risks:

Research from myself, Goda Perlaviciute and Linda Steg has similarly shown that risk perception is indeed important for people’s intentions to adapt. However, crucially, the paper – From believing in climate change to adapting to climate change: The role of risk perception and efficacy beliefs – found that actual adaptation behaviours were not predicted by risk perception, but rather by self- and outcome efficacy.

The role of risk perception is often inflated in general, and other psychological determinants are not taken into consideration; adaptation behaviour is about more than just risks and past experiences with risk.

Photo by Vladimir Gladkov