Apport des consentements à payer et de leur spatialisation à l’étude de l’acceptabilité des politiques d’adaptation à la montée du niveau de la mer liée au changement climatique

This article aims at informing the policies designed to remove assets highly exposed to climate-change-related sea level rise. This kind of adaptation policy, which implies to reduce the risk exposure, supposes a paradigm shift from the logic of protection by means of dikes, i.e. from fighting against sea level rise, to the seek to adapt and live with. From a methodological point of view, we use a sequence of tools (econometric modeling, then spatial modeling using a GIS). We test the spatialization of willingness to pay (WTP) to protect the dwellings. The input variables are part of a phenomenologic (perceptions) and of a neo-positivist (Euclidean distance, altitude) approach. Depending on their significativity, some are not kept during the modeling. The econometric and spatial analysis goes on with a cartographic analysis based on a spatialized observation of the results. The objective is to assess the attachment and so the resistances of the inhabitants with respect to the acceptability of these policies and to study whether the magnitude of WTP is explained by geographical factors coming from laws based on measurement (Taylor, 1983) such as the proximity to the risk (Euclidean distance to the risk) or if it relates to more subjective elements linked with the sensitivity of the inhabitants across time such as the attachment to the landscape or the living space (Hellequin et al., 2013, Rey-Valette et al., 2012). The analysis relies on perception surveys conducted on main and second-home residents of the communes of Palavas-les-Flots, Mauguio-Carnon and Pérols (department of Herault, France). These spatial treatments show the existence of a relatively objective risk perception by home-owners in Palavas- les-Flots and Mauguio-Carnon. These inhabitants are aware of the potential dangers given their localizations and their distances from the sea. On the other hands, in Pérols, a backcountry residential commune only indirectly concerned by submersion owing to the ponds, risk perception is deteriorated by the landscape features of the site. © 2016 Lavoisier, Paris. Tous droits réservés