Evaluating drivers of coastal relocation in Hurricane Sandy affected communities Anamaria Bukvic a,n , Andrew Smith b , Angang Zhang c a Urban Affairs and Planning, Virginia Tech, 213 Architecture Annex, Blacksburg, 24061 USA b Department of Psychology, Virginia Tech,109 Williams Hall, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA c Department of Statistics, Virginia Tech, 406 Hutcheson Hall, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA article info Article history: Received 13 April 2015 Received in revised form 18 June 2015 Accepted 18 June 2015 Available online 23 June 2015 Keywords: Relocation Retreat Adaptation Coastal Hurricane Sandy abstract The future viability of some coastal communities has been severely challenged by the recent major disasters, as well as other episodic and chronic coastal hazards. These events also instigated a dialogue on their long-term resilience, adaptation options, and the possibility of permanent relocation from high risk areas. Little is known how exposure to disaster, in combination with other contemporary coastal chal- lenges, affects willingness to consider relocation on a household level in the highly-developed urban settlements. The main objective of this paper is to provide a bottom-up perspective on this dilemma via identification of demographic determinants and other disaster-related concerns that may influence support for relocation. More specifically, this study takes an interdisciplinary approach to examine the effects of pre-disaster socio-economic household characteristics, level of preparedness, disaster ex- posure, experience with recovery, community embeddedness, and resource loss on relocation decision- making. The findings hereby reveal that the willingness to consider relocation is primarily influenced by the age of respondents, disaster exposure, level of experienced stress related to recovery, personal fi- nancial recovery concerns, future cost of living in high-risk area, concerns with increase in crime and future flooding, and disasterinduced resource loss. & 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Coastal communities are increasingly exposed to impacts of accelerated climate change such as more intense, longer-lasting, and wetter hurricanes [16,17,36,59,60] and sea-level rise (SLR) [34,46,47,63,29,11, , 48]. In combination with persistent coastal problems like erosion and land subsidence [8], the chronic and episodic nature of these events can degrade natural inundation buffers such as barrier islands, dunes, and wetlands, eventually leading to a more frequent and prolonged tidal flooding [33,46,62]. Long histories of unsustainable coastal land use and development patterns that foster high population densities and urban growth further contribute to the overall complexity of coastal issues [45]. The aforementioned conditions can exert a significant stress on social, legal, environmental, and economic sectors in coastal urban areas [3] and cause an extensive damage to infrastructure, public and private property, and productive agricultural land, potentially displacing millions of people [49,45]. In response to emerging climate change impacts and based on the value of structures, adaptation costs, socio-cultural significance, resources, and overall vulnerability, communities have three main options: do nothing, protect themselves, or relocate to a safer location [1]. In the recently published 3rd National Climate Assessment re- port [21], the authors state, “As sea level raises faster and coastal storms, erosion, and inundation cause more frequent or wide- spread threats, relocation (also called (un)managed retreat or realignment), while not a new strategy in dynamic coastal en- vironments, may become a more pressing option”. The report further notes that “up to 50% of the areas with high social vul- nerability face the prospect of unplanned displacement under the 1–4 foot range of projected sea level rise” due to financial inability to afford structural protection, difficulty to justify public expense, and lack of social and political support for more orderly retreat. Although relocation may represent the most effective long-term adaptation strategy for some coastal communities, this option is still largely considered outside the range of acceptable options due to political, institutional, socio-cultural, and economic considera- tions. However, a direct exposure to disaster as a discernable and amplified manifestation of other more gradual but chronic hazards in inherently vulnerable coastal locations can serve as a catalyst for a debate focused on questions surrounding relocation vs. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijdrr International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2015.06.008 2212-4209/& 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. n Corresponding author. Fax: þ1 540 231 3367. E-mail addresses: ana.bukvic@vt.edu (A. Bukvic), ajsmith1@vt.edu (angang8@vt.edu (Zhang). International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 13 (2015) 215–228