| Floods are a frequent type of hazard event experienced throughout the United States. This study evaluates characteristics of local governments (counties, cities, towns, villages, and so forth) that voluntarily participate, or, conversely, do not participate, in five federal programs targeted at the flood hazard. These programs are the National Flood Insurance Program, the Community Rating System, the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, Flood Mitigation Assistance, and Project Impact. This study is a macro-level empirical study of up to 21,785 local communities of the 50 United States.; The measures by which the local communities are evaluated in this study are derived from four political perspectives, namely Event-Response, Public Choice, Socio-Cultural, and Institutional. Regression analysis is used as the analysis tool in this study.; The results of this study indicate that no single political theoretical perspective fully explains why some local communities choose to participate in these federal flood programs while others choose not to participate. Measures derived from the Public Choice, Socio-Cultural, and Institutional perspectives have the most explanatory value. An Event-Response measure, specifically the number of federal flood-related disasters experienced by the communities, did also show a positive relationship, however, the strength of this relationship was much weaker than expected.; Factors that differentiate local community participation in these federal flood programs include, but are not limited to, the policy tools utilized in the program design, whether the community has a mapped coastal flood hazard, the participation of the local community in a professional association, the region of the United States in which the community is located, and the average education level of the citizens of the community.; The results of this study are considered to be of potential interest to scholars, policy-makers, and government practitioners alike. This study is also considered to be of potential value in shaping federal programs targeted at other hazards, for example terrorism, since encouraging local government participation in programs to address other hazards is also a federal government objective. |
