Public perception of engineering-based coastal flooding and erosion risk mitigation options: Lessons from three European coastal settings Nabil Touili a , Juan Baztan a,b , Jean-Paul Vanderlinden a, ⁎, Idrissa Oumar Kane a , Pedro Diaz-Simal c , Luca Pietrantoni d a Laboratoire CEARC, OVSQ, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, 11 Boulevard d'Alembert, 78280 Guyancourt, France b Marine Sciences for Society, Spain c IHC, Universidad de Cantabria, Avenida de los castros, 39005 Santander, Spain d Department of Psychology, Alma Mater Studiorum — University of Bologna, Via Filippo Re 6, 40126 Bologna, Italy abstract article info Article history: Received 4 July 2013 Received in revised form 29 December 2013 Accepted 2 January 2014 Available online xxxx Keywords: Risk perception Risk mitigation Acceptability Coastal zone Flood Iterative grounded theory Recent damages and losses associated with coastal floods have generated many analyses dealing with overexposure to flood risk, its consequences, associated technological choices and governance principles, and what seems to be a poor understanding of the causes and consequences of floods and working of coastal defences at the local level. While many analyses demonstrate that risks are both physically and socially constructed, in this paper we go further by analysing risk mitigation options (engineering works) as being dual (physically and socially constructed) as well. When envisioning mitigation options through stakeholders' perception, one can observe a mix of intertwined state- ments associated with the relevance the specific risk that is dealt with, dealing with the sometimes incomplete knowledge associated with the mitigation option and its performance at reducing risk, and, dealing with the value conflicts that may be present when envisioning a particular flood risk mitigation strategy. Our research ques- tion is “what are the drivers of stakeholder perceptions when envisioning engineering-based mitigation options.” Through qualitative empirical fieldwork conducted in three European coastal settings (Cesenatico, Santander and the Gironde Estuary) we demonstrate here that engineered mitigation solutions are socially construed by refer- ring to individual and collective heuristics associated with these options. These heuristics may lead to poor social acceptability of envisioned mitigation options, poor acceptability not directly linked to the performance in terms of risk reduction. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In this paper we identify the drivers of the stakeholders attitude to- ward a specific category of coastal risk mitigation: engineering-based risk mitigation options. Most risk perception analyses deal with the way individuals or groups relate to uncertain events and their associated outcomes. In this paper we enter the “risk perception” analysis through a different entry point: the risk mitigation options. Recent damages and losses associated with coastal floods have generated many analyses dealing with overexposure to flood risk, its con- sequences, associated poor governance principles (Eisenman et al., 2007), and what seems to be a poor understanding of the causes and consequences of floods (Burby, 2006; Schneider, 2005). This “poor under- standing” points toward a need to reinforce the science-policy interface. Yet this has been mostly approached by attempts at informing the public and policymakers in order to fill a perceived “knowledge gap”. This “knowledge gap hypothesis” is very much contested. There is ample evi- dence that knowledge is not the sole determinant of risk (mis-)percep- tion (e.g., Kahan et al., 2012). More recently, integrative approaches to the analysis of risk percep- tion have been proposed (Renn, 2008) stressing the fact that risk perceptions are determined by collective and personal manifestation of cultural backgrounds, socio-political institutions, cognitive affective factors and heuristics of information processing. This diversity of these potential sources of (mis-)perceptions indicates how ludicrous it may be to try to address one of these in order to modify attitudes. When envisioning risk mitigation strategies and options the issue of perception is complexified by the mitigation option choice itself. Risk mitigation options raise perception issues as well. Furthermore, the con- crete nature of a mitigation option implementation, its direct visibility to those affected, its existence, even if the risk does not concretize itself, may lead to a differential framing of the option chosen and of the risk under consideration. Finally, mitigation option may raise acceptability issues as some options may profoundly change the landscape, potential land use, real estate values and the likes. Coastal Engineering xxx (2014) xxx–xxx ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +33 1 80 28 55 01. E-mail addresses: nabil.touili@uvsq.fr (N. Touili), jbaztan@marine-sciences-for-society.org (J. Baztan), jean-paul.vanderlinden@uvsq.fr (J.-P. Vanderlinden), idrissa-oumar.kane@uvsq.fr (I.O. Kane), pedro.diaz@unican.es (P. Diaz-Simal), luca.pietrantoni@unibo.it (L. Pietrantoni). CENG-02835; No of Pages 5 0378-3839/$ – see front matter © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.coastaleng.2014.01.004 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Coastal Engineering journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/coastaleng Please cite this article as: Touili, N., et al., Public perception of engineering-based coastal flooding and erosion risk mitigation options: Lessons from three European coastal settings, Coast. Eng. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.coastaleng.2014.01.004