Author
Listed:
- Peter John Robinson
(De Boelelaan 1111)
- W. J. Wouter Botzen
(De Boelelaan 1111)
Abstract
Natural disaster losses are increasing both in their frequency of occurrence and severity of impacts worldwide due to climate change and socio-economic development in disaster-prone regions. In addition to public sector investments in disaster protection infrastructure, individuals can manage these losses by implementing disaster risk reduction measures at the household level. However, a host of systematic cognitive biases may prevent the taking of cost-effective forms of risk reduction by individuals. Behavioural public policies have been proposed as a way to address these biases in order to stimulate societal natural disaster preparedness. This article highlights the role of economic experiments for developing behavioural public policies that promote disaster risk reduction actions. Based on a review of the state-of-the-art of the experimental literature, several promising directions for further research in the field are outlined. That is, avenues for further experimental research in behavioural public policy are identified. We find that more experimental research is needed to examine whether: (1) behavioural public policies can complement conventional forms of economic policy that alter financial incentives; (2) methodological advancements in the field of experimental economics can be used to further develop behavioural policies aimed at triggering natural disaster preparedness; and (3) behavioural policies are useful for addressing various under-researched field observations and realities faced by individuals at risk of natural disasters.
Suggested Citation
Peter John Robinson & W. J. Wouter Botzen, 2025.
"Behavioural public policy for natural disaster preparedness and the role of economic experiments,"
Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 12(1), pages 1-7, December.
Handle:
RePEc:pal:palcom:v:12:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-025-05086-2
DOI: 10.1057/s41599-025-05086-2
Download full text from publisher
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palcom:v:12:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-025-05086-2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.nature.com/ .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.