Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

I would like to propose that we, the voting public, bear an important respon- sibility when it comes to our role in providing for the public good. Evi- dence is clear that in our system of government, elected officials are recep- tive to how we vote. If we choose to understand and prioritize the benefits of preparing for disaster, it is likely our elected offi- cials will follow our lead. But if we fail to realize the benefits of preparing, then it is more likely politi- cians will respond to those signals, throwing money at a problem that is not …

Our climate is changing. And the trend of this climate change shows the earth is, on average, getting warmer. We in New England emerged from a very cold winter in 2014 making it hard for us to see (and thus believe) the earth is getting warmer. But this is the trick of cli- mate change: The pattern of overall warming is hard to see on a day-to-day basis. We tend to judge our climate through experiencing our local weather patterns: When the weather is cold like it has been in our region over the past winter, it is hard for …

Public planning for sustainability implies a forward-looking approach that often includes imagining future harm and taking steps to prevent that future harm before it occurs. A major challenge to implementing such forward looking, or precautionary, a policy instrument is managing the impacts such policies have on existing expectations. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the role of risk perception in the development of forward-looking policy instruments. A case study example focused on coastal flood insurance in the USA is presented to highlight the difficulty of implementing sustainable policy goals when current policies incentivise the discounting of risk. The …