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

人们越来越有兴趣利用自愿计划作为一种重要的政策工具，以减轻各种危害的影响，包括与洪水有关的危害。然而，许多联邦自愿计划发现很难提高参与率和/或合规率。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、非营利组织管理和社会学等多个学科的关键见解，开发一个新的理论框架，使社区参与到缓解洪灾相关风险的联邦自愿计划中。这项研究将在制定和实施有针对性的政策时支持政策制定，以鼓励社区参与联邦志愿计划，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参与洪水风险缓解志愿计划的理论，从而更好地理解激励社区参与联邦志愿计划的一般因素。这项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)什么因素促使社区参与CRS计划？(2)在洪水风险管理实践和背景因素方面，CRS参与社区和非CRS社区有什么不同？CRS是一项旨在促进当地抗洪能力的联邦自愿计划，是一个合适的试验台，因为在超过22,000个符合条件的社区中，只有5%参与了CRS。将使用主要和次要数据来源，包括档案和访谈数据。在进行访谈前，本研究将使用倾向分数匹配技术，将随机选取的50个社区参与社区(治疗组)与50个非社区参与社区(对照组)进行配对。匹配将基于社区层面的特征，如人口规模、住房价值中值和洪水风险。这项研究的发现有望促进对社区参与一系列联邦志愿计划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.