Essays on adaptation to environmental change

This dissertation examines how communities respond to escalating environmental risks and how public policy can support effective adaptation. The first study uses public flood maps, a hydraulic model, and geolocated survey data to quantify the gaps between objective flood risk, households' risk perception, and private preparedness in the Netherlands. The second study uses an online experiment to test whether receiving personalized information on flood risk can close these gaps. The third study uses the largest river restoration project in the Netherlands to analyze the notion of success in Nature-based Solutions, arguing that definitions of success depend on actors, monitoring practices, and narratives. The fourth and last study focuses on agricultural responses to droughts in Brazil, showing that they depend on drought duration, past exposure, and land productivity. These findings underscore the challenges of designing policies that support effective adaptation to environmental change.