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Natural disasters and voter gratitude: What is the role of prevention policies?

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Abstract

Natural disasters and related prevention policies can affect voter decisions. In this study, we analyze how the occurrence of natural disasters changes voter behavior in municipal elections and how prevention policies can mitigate the impact of such catastrophic events on budget accounts and might potentially be rewarded by citizens in upcoming elections. We exploit original data on French municipalities where incumbents sought re-election between 2008 and 2020. To estimate the probability of re-election at the municipal level in the event of a natural disaster we apply a Heckman model based strategy to avoid selection bias. We find that the occurrence of a natural disaster significantly decreases the chances of re-election of incumbent mayors. However, although we show that natural hazard prevention plans can mitigate the impact of catastrophic events on budget accounts, they are not rewarded by citizens in upcoming elections. The myopia hypothesis is confirmed by our findings: voters reward incumbents for delivering investment spending or decreasing debt but not for investing in disaster preparedness.

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Fig. 1

Source: Data on Natural Hazard Prevention Plan were provided by the Ministry of Ecology. The cartographic data come from the OpenStreetMap cartographic database constituted from the cadastre made available by the DGFiP (Direction Générale des Finances Publiques)

Fig. 2

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Notes

  1. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-natural-disaster-events.

  2. The mayor of La Faute-sur-Mer in France received a 2 year prison sentence for manslaughter following storm Xynthia which resulted in the deaths of 29 inhabitants.

  3. According to article 1 of the July 13, 1982 law, “the effects of natural disasters should be regarded as direct non-insurable material damage caused by the abnormal intensity of a natural agent as its determining cause, where the usual measures to be taken to avoid such damage could not prevent its occurrence or could not be taken”. Source: Ministry of the Interior.

  4. Inter-municipal communities are unions of several municipalities to enable collective financing and management of some local public services. Currently, all French municipalities are grouped within larger jurisdictions (known as ‘Etablissements Publics de Coopération Intercommunale’ or EPCI in French).

  5. We use the inverse hyperbolic sine transformation the inverse hyperbolic sine transformation which allows minimum loss of data during the transformation.

  6. We assume that since in 2008 very few municipalities (6,713 i.e. 20% of municipalities) had an NHHP, natural hazard prevention had not become a major issue for local residents.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Frédéric Jouneau, Benjamin Monnery, Benoît Mulkay, and the three anonymous referees. We would also like to thank all the participants at seminars and conferences at which this paper was presented for their valuable comments.

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The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université Lyon 2, CNRS, Université Jean Monnet Saint-Étienne, EmLyon, GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne UMR 5824, 18 Quai Claude Bernard, 69365, Lyon Cedex 07, France

    Carla Morvan & Sonia Paty

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  1. Carla Morvan
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  2. Sonia Paty
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Correspondence to Sonia Paty.

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Appendices

Appendices

1.1 Descriptive statistics

See Appendix Table 3.

Table 3 Descriptive statistics
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1.2 Additional results: effect on municipal accounts

1.2.1 Two way fixed effect model

See Appendix Table 4.

Table 4 Impact of natural disasters on local government accounts according to their adherence to a natural hazard prevention plan
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1.2.2 Placebo test and common trend

See Appendix Figs. 3, 4 and Table 5.

Table 5 Placebo test
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Fig. 3
figure 3

Common trend before shock—general case without NHPP

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Fig. 4
figure 4

Common trend before shock—general case with NHPP

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1.2.3 Intensity analysis

See Appendix Fig. 5 and Table 6.

Table 6 Impact of natural disasters on local government accounts according to their adherence to a natural hazard prevention plan
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Fig. 5
figure 5

Effect of a major natural disaster. Estimation of the dynamic effect of a major natural disaster on the budgetary accounts of French municipalities with with robust standard errors, using a staggered difference in difference event study methodology. The control variables consist of municipal budget elements, and municipal characteristics controls

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1.2.4 Type of shocks

See Appendix Table 7.

Table 7 Regression results according to type of shocks
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1.3 Additional results: electoral outcomes

1.3.1 Sensitivity analysis

See Appendix Tables 8, 9 and 10.

Table 8 Heckman model—occurrence of natural disaster at different times in the cycle
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Table 9 Heckman model—occurrence of a major natural disaster during the election cycle
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Table 10 Heckman model—occurrence of natural disaster during the electoral cycle
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1.3.2 Heterogeneity analysis

See Appendix Tables 11, 12, 13 and 14.

Table 11 Heckman model—political variables—sample with proportional, list, two-round voting system
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Table 12 Probit model—occurrence of natural disaster during the electoral cycle—all candidates, regardless of competition—sample with majority, multi-member, two-round system
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Table 13 Heckman model—occurrence of natural disaster during the electoral cycle
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Table 14 Heckman model—Occurrence of natural disaster during the electoral cycle
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Morvan, C., Paty, S. Natural disasters and voter gratitude: What is the role of prevention policies?. Public Choice 198, 427–465 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-023-01137-x

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