Only in My Backyard: The Effect of Flood Exposure on Environmental Behavior

Abstract

Does exposure to climate shocks make people behave more pro-environmentally? I use precise residential locations to identify people exposed to floods and analyze a decade of real-world donation records from 90,000 donors in England, along with longitudinal surveys. I show that, after being directly affected by floods, people are more likely to donate to environmental charities and support the Green Party. I also find suggestive evidence that people tend to reassess their own environmental effort as not enough after direct flood experience. However, exposure to floods affecting close neighbors does not elicit similar behavioral changes, indicating an “only in my backyard” phenomenon: on average, people react to climate shocks only when personally affected. Further, I show that people with strong universalist values do increase green donations after neighboring floods. This suggests that the broader lack of response is driven by those with communitarian values, who typically care less about global environmental challenges.

Keywords: flood, climate change, environmental behavior, environmental belief