Compounding coastal hazards: effects of slow-onset and rapid-onset disasters on risk perception

The progression of climate change will increasingly challenge coastal communities necessitating proactive responses from residents. While many papers analyze risk perceptions of residents affected by singular hazard events, few look at residents’ risk perception within a multi-hazard environment. To better understand this condition, we conducted successive household surveys in 2017 and 2021, in North Carolina’s (USA) Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula, a low-lying coastal community at the vanguard of climate change. We asked residents about their exposure to the rapid-onset hazards: Hurricanes Matthew (2016), Florence (2018), and Dorian (2019); as well as their exposure to the slow-onset hazard of saltwater intrusion. Our findings reveal that saltwater intrusion is strongly associated with heightened environmental risk perception, whereas singular or repeated hurricane exposure does not have a statistically significant impact. Certain hazard exposures and heightened risk perception were also associated with a perceived necessity for future migration. We discuss how these findings may inform hazard adaptation strategies.