Sea-Level Rise as a Collective Action Problem: A Comparison of Three Regions in the US

IN-PERSON EVENT

Abstract: Adaptation to sea level rise confronts coastal communities worldwide with a new set of collective action problems – how to assess risk, plan and coordinate an adaptive response – that require collaboration to be addressed. Yet collaboration is often little more than information exchange; the planning and coordination process stalls as distributional and political concerns arise. When does collaboration result in concrete action for adaptation? In this paper, we leverage original data collected in three coastal regions in the US, using the same survey: the San Francisco Bay Area in California (2018, N=878), the Hampton Roads region in Virginia (2023, N=153), and the Tri-County (Charleston) area in South Carolina (2022, N=152). We operationalize measures of collaborative governance (shared motivation, capacity for joint action, resources) and polycentricity (multiple collaborative forums) to predict different types of collaborative activities: information exchange, planning, and action-oriented activities. We find that, in all three regions, actors who attended several forums engaged in more and more action-oriented activities. The findings suggest that participation is pivotal for polycentric systems to deliver on their promise of coordination, but also raise concerns of inclusion for those policy actors who are constrained in the extent to which they can participate. 

Chaired by: Dr Malu Gatto