Approaches in Research on Flood Risk Perception and Their Importance in Flood Risk Management

Abstract The study of flood risk perception factors can be considered by using different paradigms. In attempting to understand risk perception, two basic paradigms can be distinguished: rationalist and constructivist. The rationalist approach tends to focus on modeling, characterizing, and predicting behavioral results regarding various threats. According to the constructivist paradigm, threats are perceived as socially constructed. This paper aims to assess the importance of the rationalist and constructivist approaches in research on flood risk perception and flood risk management more broadly by answering the questions: (1) which factors are more effective in moderating attitudes towards flood risk?, (2) which research approach provides more useful information in shaping attitudes towards flood risk?, (3) research in which approach provides more useful information to improve flood risk management? The paper concludes by pointing out the desired direction of research on flood risk perception from the perspective of improving flood risk management. In contemporary empirical works managing the perception of flood risk, a rationalistic approach that psychometrically searches for cognitive models dominates. Often, statistically obtained dependencies are mutually exclusive. Thus, studies on perception that apply the constructivist approach are in an early stage of development. They indicate that the social, political, cultural, religious, and historical contexts shape the perception of flood risk. On the basis of the aforementioned information, the focus of research on flood risk should shift to studies conducted by applying the constructivist approach, highlighting the role of contextual factors in shaping risk perception.