Challenging the Concept of Rational Flood Risk Decision-Making: Cultural Influences on Homeownership in the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Zone

The rational actor paradigm (RAP) suggests individuals make rational choices when provided with adequate information. This should apply to decisions related to disasters, like flooding. However, it is also the case that nonrational factors, like cultural worldviews and political identities, could predict flood-related behaviors. We tested these ideas using a set of competing hypotheses, the ideological beliefs hypothesis and the cautious actor hypothesis. The former suggests conservatism and worldviews based in hierarchy (but not rational factors) will relate to less rational decisions, whereas the latter suggests worldviews associated with individualism and hierarchy, as well as rational factors, will predict more rational responses. We examined 1187 participants’ flood-related knowledge and ability to interpret scientific information and then presented them with decisions related to mitigation and willingness to buy (WTB) homes in at-risk areas. Twenty-eight percent of participants made both rational decisions regarding mitigation and WTB, which suggests that rationality only partially explained the decisions made. We also examined whether participants’ political identities and cultural worldviews (i.e., individualism–communitarianism and hierarchy–egalitarianism) influenced decision-making. Cultural worldviews were more consistent predictors of decision-making. Overall, we found more support for the cautious actor hypothesis, suggesting that worldviews associated with increased hierarchy, decreased egalitarianism, and decreased communitarianism were related to more rational responses. We provide additional exploration of factors related to mitigation and home-buying behavior. Overall, our results suggest rationality is not the sole factor in decisions related to disasters—cultural worldviews matter, too. Flooding is a major issue affecting millions of people, yet public responses to flood risks are often inconsistent with rational models of decision-making. This work examines how cultural worldviews and political identities influence flood-related decision-making in addition to rational factors. These findings suggest the possibility that flood mitigation strategies considering the cultural and ideological contexts in which individuals make decisions might be more successful. Further understanding these nonrational influences may help create more targeted interventions to decrease risky flood-related behavior.