Enhancing Community Resilience to Floods: A Theoretical Framework of Community Participation in Federal Voluntary Programs

人们越来越有兴趣将自愿项目作为减轻各种灾害（包括与洪水有关的灾害）影响的重要政策工具。然而，许多联邦自愿项目发现很难提高参与率和/或遵守率。更广泛地说，没有明确和全面的理论框架来解释社区中如此低的比率的原因。因此，这项工作将通过整合政治学、公共管理、环境经济学、非营利管理和社会学等多学科的关键见解，为社区参与联邦志愿项目减轻洪水相关风险提供一个新的理论框架。这项研究将支持有针对性政策的设计和实施，以鼓励社区参与联邦自愿计划，并提高社区对洪水的复原力，环境保护和适应以及关键基础设施保护等领域的合规性。这项工作追求的科学目标是发展一种参与减轻洪水风险的自愿计划的理论，从而提高对激励社区参与联邦自愿计划的因素的理解。本研究将在社区评级系统（CRS）的背景下，通过两个指导性研究问题来解决这一目标：(1)什么因素激励社区参与CRS计划？(2) CRS参与社区与非CRS参与社区在洪水风险管理实践和环境因素方面有何差异？CRS是一项旨在提高当地抗洪能力的联邦自愿项目，它是一个合适的试验平台，因为在22,000多个符合条件的社区中，只有5%参加了CRS。将使用第一手和第二手数据来源，包括档案和访谈数据。在进行访谈之前，研究将使用倾向评分匹配技术将随机选择的50个CRS参与社区（治疗组）与50个非CRS参与社区（对照组）进行匹配。匹配将基于社区层面的特征，如人口规模、房屋价值中位数和洪水风险。这项研究的结果有望促进对社区参与一系列联邦志愿项目的驱动因素的科学理解。

There has been a growing interest in using voluntary programs as a salient policy tool for mitigating the effects of various hazards, including those associated with flooding. Yet many federal voluntary programs are finding it hard to increase rates of participation and/or compliance. More broadly, there is no explicit and comprehensive theoretical framework to explain the reasons for such low rates among communities. Accordingly, this work will develop a novel theoretical framework of community participation in federal voluntary programs for the mitigation of flood-related risk by integrating key insights from multiple disciplines such as political science, public administration, environmental economics, nonprofit management and sociology. This research will support policy making in the design and implementation of targeted policies to encourage communities to participate in federal voluntary programs, and improve compliance in areas such as community resilience to floods, environmental protection and adaptation, and critical infrastructure protection.The scientific objective this work pursues is the development of a theory of participation in voluntary programs for flood risk mitigation, resulting in improved understanding of the factors that motivate communities to participate in federal voluntary programs in general. This study will address this objective in the context of the Community Rating System (CRS) through two guiding research questions: (1) What factors motivate communities to participate in the CRS program? (2) What are the differences between CRS participating communities and non-CRS participating communities with regard to flood risk management practices and contextual factors? The CRS, a Federal voluntary program designed to promote local flood resilience, is an appropriate testbed because only 5 percent of the over 22,000 eligible communities are participating in the CRS. Primary and secondary data sources will be used, including archival and interview data. Prior to conducting the interviews, the study will use Propensity Score Matching techniques to match 50 randomly selected CRS participating communities (treatment group) with 50 non-CRS participating communities (control group). The matching will be based on community-level characteristics such as population size, median housing values, and flood risk. The study's findings are expected to advance scientific understanding of the drivers of community participation in a host of federal voluntary programs.