Experience of extreme weather affects climate change mitigation and adaptation responses

TLDR

Severe storms in the 2013/2014 UK winter caused widespread flooding, emergency response, and intense media coverage, and prior work suggests extreme weather may boost climate‑change engagement though the causal pathway remains unclear. The UK winter flooding was used as a natural experiment to investigate how direct experience of extreme weather influences climate‑change perceptions and actions. The study compared 162 individuals personally affected by flooding with a nationally representative sample of 975 participants. Direct flooding experience heightened climate‑change salience, emotional responses, perceived vulnerability, and risk perceptions, and also increased broader behavioral intentions, including support for mitigation policies and personal adaptation measures unrelated to the flooding event.

Abstract

The winter of 2013/2014 saw a series of severe storms hit the UK, leading to widespread flooding, a major emergency response and extensive media exposure. Previous research indicates that experiencing extreme weather events has the potential to heighten engagement with climate change, however the process by which this occurs remains largely unknown, and establishing a clear causal relationship from experience to perceptions is methodologically challenging. The UK winter flooding offered a natural experiment to examine this question in detail. We compare individuals personally affected by flooding (n = 162) to a nationally representative sample (n = 975). We show that direct experience of flooding leads to an overall increased salience of climate change, pronounced emotional responses and greater perceived personal vulnerability and risk perceptions. We also present the first evidence that direct flooding experience can give rise to behavioural intentions beyond individual sustainability actions, including support for mitigation policies, and personal climate adaptation in matters unrelated to the direct experience.