Choice of household adaptation strategies to flood risk management in Accra, Ghana

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the psychological and socio-economic factors as well as the constraints that inhibit private precautionary flood-risk mitigation measures among urban households in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area of Ghana within the Protection Motivation framework. The results show that threat appraisal has mixed effects on the decisions by households to adopt a damage protection measure against flooding. With regards to coping appraisal, the study found that households who do not feel helpless about flooding in the neighbourhood resort to some struc tural measures such as reinforcing their house against flood damage. The study also finds that socio-economic factors have an overall positive effect on protective behaviour. Additionally, structural measures taken by the public sector to provide protection against damage from a flood are shown to complement the adoption of some specific private pro tective measures such as clearing drains and sandbagging by households. We, therefore, recommend policy choices to focus on the provision of the needed community-level flood protection infrastructure since it stimulates private flood precautionary measures