The Impact of Perceived Flood Exposure on Flood-Risk Perception: The Role of Distance

Natural hazards, such as major flood events, are occurring with increasing frequency and inflicting increasing levels of financial damages upon affected communities. The experience of such major flood events has brought about a significant change in attitudes to flood‐risk management, with a shift away from built engineering solutions alone towards a more multifaceted approach. Europe's experience with damaging flood episodes provided the impetus for the introduction of the European Floods Directive, requiring the establishment of flood‐risk management plans at the river‐basin scale. The effectiveness of such plans, focusing on prevention, protection, and preparedness, is dependent on adequate flood awareness and preparedness, and this is related to perception of flood risk. This is an important factor in the design and assessment of flood‐risk management. Whilst there is a modern body of literature exploring flood perception issues, there have been few examples that explore its spatial manifestations. Previous literature has examined perceived and real distance to a hazard source (such as a river, nuclear facility, landfill, or incinerator, etc.), whereas this article advances the literature by including an objectively assessed measure of distance to a perceived flood zone, using a cognitive mapping methodology. The article finds that distance to the perceived flood zone (perceived flood exposure) is a crucial factor in determining flood‐risk perception, both the cognitive and affective components. Furthermore, we find an interesting phenomenon of misperception among respondents. The article concludes by discussing the implications for flood‐risk management.