Why does individual risk perception matter in land use modeling? Combining survey data and agent-based land market model

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Abstract

This paper aims to understand the effects of biases in individual flood risk perception on aggregated land use patterns and their implications for macro policy. We develop a spatially explicit land market model and param-eterize individual risk perceptions with data from a survey held in the Nether-lands in 2008. Two sets of experiments are presented. A model with heteroge-neous agents produces qualitatively different results compared to a model with homogeneous agents. Individuals with low flood risk perception drive urban developments into the economically inefficient zone and leading to the increas-ing potential damage.