Perceived environmental threats, place attachment, and natural resource employment: predicting willingness to move from a threatened coastline

ABSTRACT This study examines the factors predicting willingness to move, in the face of environmental threats, among residents of southeast Louisiana, a region prone to disasters and facing slower moving threats, such as coastal erosion and environmental pollution. Using household-level survey data, I test the relationships that the number of perceived threats to one’s home, place attachment, and industry of employment have with willingness to move. Results indicate that the number of perceived threats is positively related with willingness to move, and place attachment and ties to the fishing industry are negatively related with willingness to move. Drawing on vulnerability and resilience paradigms, I conceptualize the connection between perceived threats and willingness to move as an adaptive capacity, and I conceptualize the connections between place attachment and ties to the fishing industry with unwillingness to move as a form of vulnerability. These analyses provide insight into an issue facing more and more Americans, elective climate-change-induced migration.