Risk governance is a widely used framework in natural and societal risk management research. Risks from natural hazards in urban areas call for the establishment of rigorous and participatory urban risk governance. In this study, we examined participatory risk governance (PRG) of flood risk management (FRM) in Seoul, South Korea. We conducted key informant interviews and implemented a survey with citizens, to explore perceptions of flood risks and risk management, and to examine prospects for improving PRG in Seoul. We found a gap between the perceptions of key informants and citizens. Key informants believed that citizens’ low awareness of flood risks hinders PRG. Yet our research found that citizens’ risk awareness was not low, and risk awareness may not be the main barrier to participation in PRG. Instead, we found that citizens lacked knowledge of FRM actions, and they assigned government bodies a high level of responsibility for FRM, compared to the level of responsibility that citizens assigned to themselves. Moreover, the actors involved in FRM tended not to trust each other, which implies a lack of mutual understanding. To increase the effectiveness of PRG, we suggest a polycentric governance structure anchored by a leading actor group, and active promotion of the participation of actors at multiple levels of governance. Communication between government and citizen participants, designed to foster improved understanding and recognition of one another’s roles and contributions to FRM, will enhance trust and improve the implementation of PRG in Seoul.
1 Introduction
Since the early 2000s, risk governance has gained growing attention (van Asselt and Renn 2011). It has been widely used as a theoretical framework in research on management of natural and societal risks (Renn and Walker 2008). According to Aven and Renn (2020), communication and inclusion, integration, and reflection are the three key principles of risk governance. With these features, governance supports societal actors in pulling together and coordinating their actions to manage disaster risk (Djalante et al. 2013). Governance is fundamentally enhanced by the inclusion and integration of views from a network of varied stakeholders (Rhodes 2007). Moreover, as scholars have underscored participation as a foundation for managing disaster risks (Aoki 2018), this study focused on participatory risk governance for risk management.
Klinke and Renn (2021) stated that risk governance indicates complex sociopolitical processes, structures, and institutions that support decision making in risk management. Highlighting participation, we used the term participatory risk governance (PRG) to denote risk governance that fosters actors’ participation throughout the risk governing process. The forms and types of participation in risk governance can vary, including in urban areas where people have been claimed to be indifferent, anonymous, transitory, and diverse (Wirth 1938).
Anzeige
Seoul, the capital of South Korea, with an urban-core population of about 10 million and a metropolitan area population of about 25 million, typically experiences flooding during its summer monsoon season, called Jangma. The city has invested resources in flood risk preparedness and response, as part of the city’s overall climate and disaster risk reduction efforts. In 2020, Seoul was designated as one of the role model cities by the United Nations Office of Disaster Risk Reduction. In this study, we confined our focus on flood risk because prior research identified flooding as the most severe weather-related disaster risk in Seoul (Kim 2017). Since 2012, the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) has publicly promoted citizen participation within governance for managing flood risk. While risk governance encourages societal actors, whose relationships with risk management are varied, to participate in the management of risk, in Seoul, the engagement often manifests chiefly in two ways. Typically, government bodies have authority to plan and implement flood risk management (FRM) measures; local citizen representatives participate in local-level implementation of FRM measures through institutional arrangements that confer them status as assistants to municipal governments. Thus, we characterized government bodies and local representatives as active participants with formal roles in FRM. In contrast, ordinary citizens can provide input to government bodies by reporting complaints or through their attendance at public hearings; however, they lack authority or formal status to make FRM decisions on behalf of city government. Considering this administrative and institutional context, therefore, we distinguished two types of participation: formal-active participants—indicating actors administratively or institutionally involved in FRM, with a responsibility to be actively involved—and informal participants—indicating actors whose agency lacks official status and whose participation depends on a sense of individual interest or civic responsibility. These types of participation are particularly distinct in Seoul, due to the institution of local autonomous disaster prevention organizations (LADPO) and local neighborhood representatives (LNR) by the SMG—which confer status to some citizen participants in FRM. We examined participatory risk governance through a case study of Seoul, based on documents, interviews, and surveys gathered through two phases of fieldwork. We primarily sought to answer three questions: (1) What is the role of PRG in Seoul’s FRM? (2) Who has participated in flood risk governance? and (3) What are the challenges that undermine PRG?
Multiple studies have contributed to theoretical discussion of risk governance (for example, Renn and Walker 2008; Aven and Renn 2010) and have examined the key factors of governance to effectively manage disaster risk (for example, Djalante et al. 2012). To our knowledge, empirical discussion of the challenges that can undermine risk governance for South Korea, especially in urban areas, has been relatively limited. This study aimed to contribute to discussions of the application of PRG within the context of urban natural hazards and disaster risks for an understudied location.
2 Participatory Risk Governance for Urban Flood Risk Management
In spite of the ambiguity in its meaning, the term governance has been widely used by defining a new way of governing society (Rhodes 1996; Stoker 1998). The term governance generally indicates that various actors, including governmental institutions and civil society entities, contribute to making society function (Tierney 2012). In the following subsections, we introduce the usage of governance in the context of risk and describe risk governance in flood risk management by focusing on the participation feature.
2.1 A Brief Theoretical Background of Risk Governance
Since the early 2000s risk governance has become a widely-used framework for risk-related social science research (van Asselt and Renn 2011), especially regarding hazards and disasters (Komendantova et al. 2014). Risk governance is typically understood as sociopolitical cyclic processes that offer collective decision making to identify, assess, evaluate, manage, and communicate risks (Renn and Graham 2006). Nonetheless, Klinke and Renn (2021) noted that further clarification is needed to define the scope of risk governance and distinctions between risk governance and other analogous terms such as risk management. A recent review on flood risk management and governance (Dordi et al. 2022) makes the following distinctions: risk governance refers to foundational institutional arrangements, such as partnerships and coordinating entities, to align the actions of government and societal actors in reducing flood risk, whereas management refers to the overarching approach of using multiple strategies and instruments, including development of institutions and alliances, to reduce risk.
Anzeige
Some common principles of governance discussed in the literature include accountability, effectiveness, efficiency, openness, and responsiveness (Graham et al. 2003). Van Asselt and Renn (2011) translated these principles into the context of risk management and came up with three key principles of risk governance: communication and inclusion; integration, and reflection. Given the need for engagement of and contribution by various actors, risk governance values actor-driven collective efforts and a collaborative risk governing process (van Asselt and Renn 2011).
2.2 Urban Flood Risk and Participatory Risk Governance
In some places, the paradigm for managing flood risk has recently shifted from structural flood defense by a centralized authority to collaborative and integrative management that includes various actors’ participation (Heintz et al. 2012). In urban areas, the increasing risks posed by environmental, socioeconomic, and political changes have increased the need for applying risk governance in FRM (Hegger et al. 2014). Collective efforts and communication among actors, through a governance framework, contribute to preparation for unexpected and uncertain changes associated with flood risk (Hutter 2016).
Some researchers have noted drawbacks to the application of risk governance approaches in FRM. For example, urban risk governance strategies may become complex or get more (or less) attention, due to diversification, that is, involving multiple actors may cause potential conflicts among them (Dieperink et al. 2016). Diversification can lead to a lack of alignment between FRM measures and policies, which results in fragmented risk management. Indeed, Huck et al. (2020) stated that urban disaster risk management is often characterized by a fragmented governance structure, due to inflexible characteristics of municipal level governance or institutions that fail to collaborate. The fragmentation issue highlights the pivotal role of a mechanism to coordinate collaboration among actors (that is, participants) and to give directions regarding the contributions by them.
In this study, we highlighted the role of participation in risk governance. By emphasizing participation, risk governance can support the involvement of a broad spectrum of actors in various aspects of the FRM process and can lead the participants to share accountability for risk management (Wiering et al. 2017). Scholars have noted a strong connection between risk governance and participation. De Marchi (2003) stated that risk governance bridges “sound” science and (democratic) participation. Calling for participation in knowledge-creation as well as risk management, she underscored public participation from the beginning of decision-making processes in risk governance, notwithstanding the difficulty of fully realizing participatory governance. Indeed, participation is a key facet of risk governance since governance itself is about “governing with and through networks” (Rhodes 2007) and relies on development and diffusion of various norms to encourage collective decision making. Moreover, many studies have highlighted citizen participation as an essential aspect of governance for disaster risk reduction. Shi (2012) stated that engaging civil society is one of the key elements of integrated disaster risk governance; Schweizer (2021) addressed how public engagement brings multiple knowledge perspectives into governance and, thus, contributes to the quality of decision making. Building on these views, we defined risk governance as the processes of governing risks with a collective, participatory decision-making process, informed by reliable scientific information and local knowledge.
3 Methods
In this section, we provide the environmental and geographical background of the study site and address the data collection process. We describe the data analysis processes for the quantitative (survey) and qualitative (interview) data used in our study.
3.1 Research Sites
The rainy summer season, Jangma, usually spans late June to late July and accounts for 30–40% of annual precipitation (KMA 2022). An increase of torrential rainfall events in South Korea due to the changing meteorological conditions related to climate change and expanded impervious surfaces due to urban development have heightened Seoul’s flood risk (Kim et al. 2013; SMG 2018a). Seoul consists of 25 districts (gu), in which flood risk varies based on factors such as proximity to streams, altitude, infrastructural conditions, and socioeconomic contexts.
We gathered interview and survey data in two of the 25 districts over the course of seven months in 2018 and 2019: Gwangjin-gu and Guro-gu (Fig. 1). Studies have shown that these two districts are among the six districts at high flood risk in Seoul (Sung et al. 2012; Kim et al. 2013). It is known that meteorological conditions (for example, maximum daily precipitation) contribute to flood risk in Gwangjin-gu, whereas socioeconomic conditions, such as a lack of parks,1 contribute to increased flood risk in Guro-gu (Kim et al. 2013). Despite high flood risk, the two districts have not experienced substantial flood losses since 2013. Domestic news media have reported successful flood risk reduction efforts (for example, pre-monitoring areas highly exposed to floods and no flood losses for the past few years) in these districts (Simin Ilbo 2016; ABD 2019). Three streams flow through Guro-gu, whereas one stream flows nearby Gwangjin-gu. Gwangjin-gu is also bordered by the Han River, which used to be often flooded during heavy rains. In Guro-gu, about 2.6% of all households live in semi-underground units—which is considered one of the most critical socioeconomic vulnerabilities in Seoul—while Gwangjin-gu’s semi-underground unit rate, roughly 14.8%, is the third highest among the 25 districts (Kyunghyang Shinmun 2020). Given the contrasts between the two districts, their high risk for floods, and the fact that they have not experienced floods for a decade, we aimed to investigate how flood risk has been understood and governed in these districts. All districts in Seoul implement the same administrative and institutional framework of flood risk governance that is deployed by the SMG. By investigating these two successful cases, we aimed to share lessons of how a governance framework contributes to FRM and of the opportunities to further improve the current framework. In each district, we collected data from five sub-districts, which either experienced floods or are near streams, out of 15 sub-districts in Gwangjin-gu and out of 16 sub-districts in Guro-gu.
Fig. 1
Location of the study areas in Seoul, South Korea. a River and streams in the city: the Han River bisects the city, and local streams (cheon) flow either through or near the two districts. b Areas where data were collected (colored).
×
The 2010 Seoul flood provided an opportunity to reappraise the city’s FRM because the huge flood occurred in spite of the city’s recently installed USD 2.1 million drainage maintenance project. The Korean Board of Audit and Inspection identified an ill-considered land use change plan approved by a district office as the main cause of the flooding (Park 2013). In another part of the city, a 2011 flood and accompanying landslide caused 18 deaths. In Seoul, flood damages were exacerbated by fragmented response among responsible government agencies and the absence of a pivotal actor to lead the deployment of emergency resources to networks of actors (Ju 2012). Indeed, the SMG implemented district level FRM in the 2000s by decentralizing FRM and promoting local-level management. However, it was found that the decentralized FRM led to inequitable deployment of political, human, financial, and infrastructural resources and lacked cooperation and collaborative efforts to reduce flood risk across the city. Consequently, in 2011 the SMG returned to a city government-centered FRM that demands cooperation and participation of local offices in the city’s FRM. After the SMG unified the city-level FRM in 2011, the drainage system and infrastructure across the city improved, and the SMG’s FRM has highlighted PRG and required cooperative and collective efforts across the city, district, and sub-district levels, including both government officials and citizens. Nevertheless, the increasing heavy rainfall events due to climate change (SMG 2018b) and ongoing urban development undermines the adequacy of these measures to address future flood risks.
Consequently, the SMG has made efforts to establish risk governance, in addition to an infrastructure capacity improvement plan (SMG 2016). The SMG has enhanced infrastructure capacity to deal with flood risk since the 1990s, including constructing rainwater pumping stations in low-lying areas and creating embankments along streams. Since the mid-2010s, the SMG has widened its FRM scope by devoting attention to nonstructural measures, such as public campaigns and public service advertisements to raise public awareness of flood risks. Moreover, the SMG has devised institutional tools to engage volunteer local residents in FRM (that is, local public organizations, LPOs: groups of people who voluntarily serve their neighborhood by assisting local offices), expand the scope of risk management practices, and foster collaboration among actors. In particular, the SMG has highlighted the importance of vertical collaboration among government offices at the city, district, and sub-district levels and horizontal cooperation with various actors in the city, including researchers and residents (SMG 2016, 2020). Through the engagement of various actors, the city has sought better identification and assessment of flood risk and has especially advocated for public contributions to local FRM because of their experience and practical knowledge of local flood risk (SMG 2013, 2018b).
3.2 Data Collection and Analysis
We collected qualitative and quantitative data over seven months. We gathered qualitative data from reports released by the SMG and district offices and from interviews with key informants (that is, formal-active participants), including researchers of the city’s flood risk advisory committees, SMG, district and sub-district officials, and LPO members. We gathered quantitative data through a survey of ordinary citizens (that is, informal participants). We cross-validated our findings by comparing the two types of data to identify gaps between formal-active participants and informal participants, regarding contributions to, perceptions of, and attitudes toward FRM.
3.2.1 Qualitative Data
We collected FRM documents (for example, white papers and manuals) published by the SMG, local offices, or government-affiliated research institutes. Based on the questionnaire we created to identify the role, structure, and challenges of PRG for Seoul’s FRM, we conducted 30-to-180 minute semistructured in-person interviews with seven groups of formal-active participants (Table 1). Both datasets helped us articulate the city’s administrative and institutional structure of FRM. For interviews, we first directly contacted some of the interviewees and then used snowball sampling to engage more interviewees, based on the initial interviewees’ suggestions. We met with some interviewees multiple times to continue prior conversations and obtain further information. The interview questions were designed to identify the current FRM risk governance framework and its effectiveness. We conducted all interviews in Korean, the official language of South Korea. Interviews were recorded, then transcribed first in Korean and then translated into English by the first author of this article. The authors reviewed and discussed the translations multiple times, to correct potential inaccuracies due to mismatches in nuances in the two languages. We coded responses and assigned them to one of three categories: FRM measures, actors’ roles and responsibilities, and the challenges of carrying out responsibilities. For open-ended questions we followed the interviewee’s lead, while maintaining the protocol of our questions.
Table 1
List of key informants interviewed in Seoul, South Korea for the study of participatory risk governance for urban flood risk management
Level
Groups of interviewees (Codes for quotations)
Number of interviewees
City level
Advisory committee for Seoul’s FRM (AR)
3
City officials (CO)
3
District level
District officials (DO)
3 (Gwangjin-gu)
3 (Guro-gu)
Local autonomous disaster prevention organization (LADPO)
1 (Gwangjin-gu)
1 (Guro-gu)
District councilor (DC)
1 (Guro-gu)
Sub-district Level
Sub-district officials (SDO)
8 (Gwangjin-gu)
8 (Guro-gu)
Local neighborhood representatives (LNR)
18 (Gwangjin-gu)
9 (Guro-gu)
Local public organizations (LPOs) is a term that includes both LADPO and LNR.
3.2.2 Quantitative Data
We categorized the challenges identified during interviews and then composed multiple Likert-scale survey questions for each category to cross-check the challenges. For example, interviews suggested that citizens lack flood risk awareness; thus, our survey questions examined respondents’ awareness of flood risk. We conducted surveys with citizens residing in the two districts. Our initial plan, to survey people by knocking on doors of randomly selected addresses across the research site, was discouraged by local officials, who cited privacy issues. Thus, we visited local public community centers run by the sub-district offices in each district. The centers offer residents educational, physical, and cultural classes and we enlisted survey respondents from among the various classes. We also enlisted survey respondents on public streets in randomly selected locations within each sub-district. In this way, we attempted to include an aspect of randomization in our sampling strategy. None of the respondents served as a member of an LPO. We also identified additional respondents through snowball sampling, based on recommendations from initial respondents. We collected 90 surveys in Gwangjin-gu and 119 surveys in Guro-gu. We tallied the survey results for each Likert category and converted the results to percentages.
4 Results
Here, we present the results from both qualitative (that is, interview) and quantitative (that is, survey) data analyses. In Sect. 4.1, we illustrate the challenges identified from the interviews. In Sect. 4.2, we show the findings from the surveys. The survey results are listed in order of the associated challenges addressed in Sect. 4.1.
4.1 The Role of Participatory Risk Governance for Flood Risk Management in Seoul
The findings here are from part of the qualitative data analysis. The overarching structure of the city’s FRM is supported by South Korea’s Countermeasures Against Natural Disasters Act; the Act provides a protocol for Seoul to engage multiple actors in PRG (Fig. 2). At the national level, South Korea’s Ministry of Environment (MOE) provides flood risk management plans (for example, flood monitoring), whereas the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport (MOLIT) manages rivers. Working cooperatively with these two ministries, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS) governs national-level disaster prevention, response, and recovery measures and policies. The SMG follows FRM administrative protocols and regulations offered by these ministries. As two DOs explained during the interviews, city district offices have partial authority for district-level FRM, but their plans are usually subordinate to the SMG’s; sub-district offices support the implementation of finer-scale policies and measures.
Fig. 2
Structure of participatory risk governance in Seoul, South Korea, focusing on formal-active actors. Note The ministries—Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport (MOLIT), Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS), and Ministry of Environment (MOE)—offer an overarching policy frame while all the detailed measures and plans are prepared and implemented by the city and district levels, with the support from sub-district offices. Local public organizations (LPOs) assist district and sub-district offices to operationalize the measures by reaching out to vulnerable households and reporting flood-related issues in local areas. SMG Seoul Metropolitan Government; K-Water is a government-affiliated corporation that works on water resource development and water provision projects through government contracts; LADPO Local autonomous disaster prevention organizations; LNR Local neighborhood representatives.
×
The governance framework to manage flood risk calls for administrative actors at different levels to take part in FRM, which allows for public participation. For example, besides government offices conducting identification and assessment of flood risk, LPOs report local-level risks that they have identified. The LPOs are usually involved in FRM, mostly in practice of identification, monitoring, and management of flood risk. In Seoul’s FRM, risk assessment often involves some kind of land survey, which is performed by private companies. The LPOs supplement the work of sub-district local officials and are typically involved in the following ways2: reporting local area flood exposure/vulnerability to the sub-district/district offices (identification), observing local day-to-day risk factors (monitoring), and conducting outreach to vulnerable neighbors (public outreach).
Moreover, the city government plans construction work for structural FRM measures based on both city-level risk assessment and information from local offices. For nonstructural measures, the LPOs work with local officials to implement measures in their neighborhood. Seoul’s participatory flood risk governance is implemented through these actors’ participation. Participatory risk governance allows the actors to shape both vertical and horizontal networks that implement FRM policies and objectives, set by the national government agencies (for example, MOIS) at the city and local levels.
4.2 Interview Results: Challenges to Participatory Flood Risk Governance
In this section, we document challenges that were raised more than three times by interviewees and placed them into four categories: (1) citizens’ lack of flood risk awareness; (2) citizens’ lack of self-help spirit; (3) low prioritization of flood risk management by citizens; and (4) trust status.
4.2.1 Lack of Flood Risk Awareness
Lack of flood risk awareness was cited by interviewees as a major impediment to the effectiveness of flood risk governance. Multiple interviewees—two DOs, seven SDOs, two LADPOs, and eight LNRs—noted that citizens easily forget about flood losses because flooding does not occur annually and they perceive flooding as someone else’s risk. Challenges include raising awareness of the need for individual flood risk preparedness and encouraging cooperation with the government’s recommendations. To raise awareness of flood risk and response, public education and outreach campaigns and advertisements have been implemented. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether these measures have been effective, as one CO, one DO, and one LADPOs noted that citizens tend to be overconfident, and they underestimate both the intensity of flooding and the associated risk. Moreover, while some of the campaigns and advertisements are available through various media outlets (for example, television, billboards on streets, and so on) and in foreign languages, such as English and Chinese, public education is mostly available in Korean and requires ordinary citizens to travel (usually) to district offices to participate. Consequently, there may be gaps in the city’s efforts to include flood risk education for immigrants to South Korea and for the population of people with disabilities.
4.2.2 Lack of a Self-Help Spirit
The second challenge cited by interviewees is a lack of a self-help spirit among citizens. Self-help is defined as “the activity of providing what you need for yourself […] without going to an official organization” (Cambridge Dictionary n.d.). We used this term to indicate a willingness to make one’s own efforts to reduce risks. Interviewees expressed concerns that citizens perceive the government bodies as almost entirely responsible for FRM and take no individual responsibility for protecting themselves from the risk. In other words, the tendency of citizens to assign external responsibility demonstrates a lack of willingness to participate in PRG. The lack of perceived self-accountability for the citizens own risk reduction and safety leads to a low level of willingness to cooperate with FRM measures guided by government officials and LPOs; these tendencies may discourage formal-active participants, such as LPO members, and undermine FRM outcomes. For example, when sub-district officials and LPOs reach out to citizens during risk preparedness status checkups, which require the citizens’ consent, sometimes citizens treat the officials and LPOs as intruders who violate their privacy and mention that they desire no support. One DO, four SDOs, one LADPO, and four LNRs pointed out the issue. Some citizens treat the officials and LPOs as maintenance workers by demanding that the officials attend to household-level responsibilities, such as installing anti-backflow valves that prevent flooding. Consequently, the interviewees—one CO, one DO, two SDOs, one LADPO, and three LNRs—were concerned that these barriers may limit the effectiveness of FRM measures and demoralize administrative and institutional efforts promoted through the city’s risk governance system. One of the interviewed COs said that the citizens need to be more self-reliant.
4.2.3 Low Prioritization of Flood Risk Management
Citizens placing a low priority on flood risk reduction was identified as another challenge. The SMG and district offices have created flood risk maps for the corresponding areas. However, the maps are only available for internal agency use, due, in part, to an SMG concern that the maps will raise conflicts. When the offices initially released the maps, some citizens who live in high flood risk areas filed complaints, because information on the maps can affect the resale value of their land or houses. Even district councilors insisted that local officials withdraw maps because of the concerns that presenting their district as an unsafe area may harm the reputation of the district; thus, the maps were withdrawn according to two DOs and six SDOs.3 Two COs and one DO mentioned the tension between their need to inform citizens of flood risk and their responsibility to be responsive to public sentiment. One CO stated that urban risk governance should allow citizens to access essential risk information (for example, flood risk maps); thus, requesting a withdrawal of the maps is similar to relinquishing their right-to-know. Ironically, among the interviewees, about 50% of local officials and about 64% of LPO members (that is, the formal-active participants) suggested that the release of flood risk maps is not necessary because infrastructure improvements and risk management by the formal-active participants effectively ameliorate flood risk. In addition, according to several interviewees, it is unnecessary to release the maps to the public due to a lack of citizen interest and because it may raise citizen unease about neighborhood safety.
4.2.4 Trust Status
Perceived trust status is also a potential challenge to promoting PRG. The interviewees expressed frustration that ordinary citizens can seldom be convinced to follow flood preparedness and risk reduction instructions from the formal-active participants. Some of the interviewees—one CO, two DOs, three SDOs, and one LADPO—mentioned that citizens seldom believe that risk warnings and recommendations from government offices pertain to them; yet, according to two COs, one DO, two SDOs, and five LNRs, citizens’ trust in government actions is crucial for eliciting citizen participation in FRM. One DO and one SDO mentioned that this may imply that the government officials and LPOs have little confidence in citizens’ inclination to participate in FRM. Consequently, we infer that there is a lack of trust in the relationship between ordinary citizens and government bodies.
4.3 Survey Results: Citizens’ Perceptions and Attitudes about Flood Risk Management
To verify the challenges raised by formal-active participants in Seoul’s FRM PRG, we conducted a survey with informal participants (that is, ordinary citizens) to examine their stance regarding the FRM. More than half (54.6%) of the respondents perceived flood risk as important in their neighborhoods (Fig. 3); moreover, 77.0% of the respondents thought climate change has increased flood risk, based on information from news media (not shown in Fig. 3). While more than half of the respondents were aware of flood risk, more than two thirds (72.7%) of the respondents lacked knowledge of flood preparedness or response actions. Although 19.2% of the respondents would not volunteer for FRM, about 40% of the respondents were willing to formal-actively participate in FRM and another about 40% of the respondents indicated that they were fairly willing to participate (Fig. 3, Q29).
Fig. 3
Survey results of questions about Seoul citizens’ awareness of flood risk, knowledge of response actions, and willingness to participate in local flood risk management (FRM). These questions correspond to the challenge of the citizens’ lack of flood risk awareness. The phrases stated within the parentheses are the topics associated with each question.
×
While 86.7% of the respondents perceived a need for continuing FRM in their neighborhood, the respondents tended to assign the majority of FRM responsibility to government bodies (Fig. 4). Survey results show that about 72.8%, 63.9%, and 64.3% of the respondents assigned high or very high responsibility for FRM to national, city, and local governments, respectively, whereas 51.4% of the respondents assigned citizens high or very high responsibility. Fifty percent of the respondents perceived that LPOs share high or very high responsibility for FRM.4 Overall, the respondents tended to assign more responsibility to government bodies than to citizens. Approximately 24% of the respondents did not answer questions 19 through 23.
Fig. 4
Survey results of questions about Seoul citizens’ perceptions of shared responsibility for flood risk management (FRM). The questions correspond to the challenge of the citizens’ lack of self-help spirit. The phrases stated within the parentheses are the topics associated with each question. LPOs Local public organizations.
×
Similar numbers of respondents placed high or very high priority on neighborhood-level disaster safety (92.2%) and land or housing prices (93.1%) (Fig. 5); 87.2% of the respondents perceived a high or very high need for public access to flood risk maps, in contrast to the 6.4% (5.4% + 1.0%) of respondents who suggested either no or a low need for access to the maps (Fig. 5, Q12).
Fig. 5
Survey results of questions about Seoul citizens’ perceptions about publicly available flood risk maps. The questions correspond to the challenge of the citizens’ low prioritization of flood risk management. The phrases stated within the parentheses are the topics associated with each question. FRM Flood risk management.
×
We asked the respondents questions about their perceptions of local officials’ and LPOs’ (that is, formal-active participants) contributions to FRM, to determine their knowledge-based trust—that is, trust based on the citizens’ knowledge about the officials’ capabilities (Alzahrani et al. 2018) (Fig. 6). More than half of the respondents indicated that they had not considered the formal-active participants’ understanding of local flood risk and its management (Fig. 6, Q25 and Q27). Only 35.9% answered that LPOs are helpful in neighborhood FRM, whereas 46.9% suggested that LPOs are not helpful.
Fig. 6
Survey results of questions about Seoul citizens’ perceptions of local actors’ contributions to flood risk management (FRM). These questions correspond to the challenge of the citizens’ trust status. The phrases stated within the parentheses are the topics associated with each question. LPOs Local public organizations.
×
5 Discussion
In this section, we discuss the fit between the challenges identified by the interviewees and the survey results.
5.1 Risk Awareness
The interviewees mentioned that citizens’ lack of flood risk awareness results in a low level of public cooperation in carrying out recommended flood preparedness and response measures, which limits the effectiveness of PRG. The survey showed that approximately 40% of the respondents expressed willingness to actively participate in FRM, which indicates the potential for the city to engage more of the informal participants. However, more than two-thirds of the survey respondents answered that they had no or little knowledge of flood preparedness and response actions, and this confirms the interviewees’ concerns.
From these insights, we infer that citizens’ lack of awareness is not the greatest challenge to sustaining PRG in Seoul, even though studies suggested that risk awareness is a critical factor for effective disaster risk management (MacAskill 2019). While studies have demonstrated the need for raising risk awareness to increase community preparedness (Bradford et al. 2012; Hernández-Moreno and Alcántara-Ayala 2017), our findings show adequate risk awareness, but a lack of knowledge about preparedness and response actions. We postulate that increasing media reports regarding climate change-induced extreme events and flood risk awareness campaigns may have increased flood risk awareness. Currently, these campaigns tend to focus on notifying citizens about flood risk and providing generalized preparedness measures. These could focus more on preparation for specific situations, flood drills, and actions to take during flood emergencies.
5.2 Self-Help Spirit and Attitude toward Informal Participation
The interviewees mentioned that citizens lack an action-focused attitude to comply with FRM measures or to protect themselves from floods (that is, self-help spirit). The interviewees’ key concern was that this lack of willingness to take actions, pertaining to over-reliance on government bodies to take care of flood risk, tends to hinder effective implementation and outcome of PRG for FRM. The survey results confirm the citizens’ tendency to rely on government bodies (Fig. 4). This shows a gap between the formal-active participants’ expectation for informal participants to exhibit proactive and self-reliant behavior, and the actual tendency of informal participants to rely on government bodies to manage all aspects flood risk. This gap poses a large challenge to effective participatory flood risk governance. Given that government bodies in Seoul have communicated flood risks and actions to reduce flood risk to citizens, we noted a communication gap between the two groups of participants. Driessen et al. (2018) stated that when governments take a lead in FRM, citizens tend to expect paternalistic care from the government. Seoul’s use of slogans such as “Zero concerns of flood risk,” “Improving flood risk management response completeness” (SMG 2010, 2020) may condition citizens to respond in a passive and reactive manner.
Nevertheless, we also see opportunities. Collaboration-based FRM promotes efficient responsibility sharing (Geaves and Penning-Rowsell 2015) and people with a strong sense of individual responsibility have a greater tendency to take protective actions (Lindell and Whitney 2000). The fact that the SMG takes participation-based FRM and about 74% of the survey respondents still acknowledged their personal responsibility for FRM implies a strong potential to encourage citizens to have self-responsibility. Moreover, Jang et al. (2016) found greater success in risk management programs that explicitly aim to elicit expectations of positive outcomes from public preparedness actions, noting that public participants in risk management are typically people who expect positive outcomes from their efforts. Lukasiewicz and Dovers (2018) noted that the more stakeholders are engaged in risk governance, the more empowered they feel; government bodies often overlook the importance to ordinary citizens of social justice through personal and community empowerment. Thus, Seoul’s government bodies can enlist greater participation in FRM by exploiting potential synergies between (1) citizen education that emphasizes and reflects back to the community the positive outcomes from citizens’ efforts in collaborative responsibility for FRM; (2) enhanced government efforts to inform citizens of flood risks and the efficacy of associated actions to reduce risk; (3) transparency in communication about the need for collaborative governance and participation to reduce flood risk—as a means of sharing power and responsibility with communities; and (4) the potentiality of the citizens, who perceive some responsibility for the management of flood risk, to participate in FRM.
As household-level responsibility for FRM reduces the costs of FRM and provides higher return on invested resources (Mees et al. 2016), FRM studies have put an increasing emphasis on personal responsibility (Nye et al. 2011). Yet, citizens’ vulnerabilities and their capabilities to contribute to FRM vary (Johnson and Priest 2008). Thus, justice must be factored into the process of promoting citizen participation. For instance, our survey results show that more than 70% of the respondents lacked sufficient knowledge of FRM actions (Fig. 3, Q9); however, we did not collect data on the causes of their lack of knowledge. It is reasonable to infer that some percentage of respondents would lack sufficient capacities or resources to participate in FRM even if provided with adequate knowledge of actions. Consequently, citizen participation in FRM might be enhanced if risk reduction actions explicitly take varying capabilities and resources into account.
5.3 Flood Risk Priority and Trust Issues
The interviewees mentioned that citizens tend to place a low priority on FRM, and the interviews suggested conflicts between local offices and residents on the flood risk map release. Moreover, even the local officials have different views of the public release of risk maps. In contrast, although 93.1% of the respondents placed high or very high importance on maintaining property values, more than 92% of them said that securing their neighborhood from flooding is important and approximately 87% of them think that flood maps need to be publicly available (Fig. 5). From this, we infer that the low citizen priority on FRM may not undermine PRG.
For trust issues, more than half of survey respondents answered that local officials and LPOs lack sufficient understanding of local flood risk to effectively manage the risk. Moreover, 23.3% and 30.5% of the respondents rated local officials’ and LPOs’ knowledge of local flood risk as very poor or poor, respectively (Fig. 6). A total of 46.9% respondents rated the helpfulness of LPOs as poor or very poor. These results contrast with the local officials’ acknowledgment of LPOs as key informants on local flood risk and their important contributions to local FRM. From this we infer a low level of knowledge-based trust (see Alzahrani et al. 2018) between informal and formal-active participants.
The contrast in survey and interview findings about priority and trust issues points to a lack of communication. While interviewees mentioned that citizens place a low priority on flood risk, survey results show that citizens consider flood risk a high priority (Fig. 5). The survey results pertaining to trust reveal that citizens tend to lack knowledge of the efforts and effectiveness of formal-active participants and their understanding of neighborhood flood risk (Fig. 6). While local officials laud LPOs’ contributions to local FRM, close to half of the survey respondents reported that the LPOs’ contributions to local FRM is poor or very poor (Fig. 6). From these findings, we infer that both citizens and formal-active participants lack adequate understanding of each other’s efforts and lack belief in each other’s role. Given that trust can increase public stakeholders’ participation in disaster risk actions (Peng et al. 2020), supporting trust-building between citizens and government bodies is critical. Moreover, in the context of risk governance, communication refers to how actors interact and exchange their knowledge, experiences, and concerns (Renn and Graham 2006). While formal-active participants have multiple means of communicating to one another, including formal meetings and casual interactions, formal-active participants and citizens seldom exchange their views on flood risk and FRM unless citizens make direct inquiries or formal-active participants reach out to local residents. Although the city’s FRM promotes PRG, citizens rarely have opportunities to learn about the contributions of local officials and LPOs to FRM.
The SMG and local offices use multiple channels to garner the citizens’ inquiries and complaints, and officials typically reply within a few days. Yet, this kind of communication tends to be limited to citizens who use those channels and may not be effective for exchanging knowledge and information with a broader spectrum of citizens. Communication has been identified as one of the key elements of risk governance (Aven and Renn 2020), and studies have argued the importance of communication among actors to form and maintain a governance framework (Corfee-Morlot et al. 2011; Boholm et al. 2012). While communicating risk information is important, the intent and content of the communication is also important for citizens to recognize their accountability and FRM responsibilities, so they can participate effectively. Informing citizens of their rights, responsibilities, and accountability, as well as options they can choose, is fundamental to legitimate citizen participation (Arnstein 1969). News media, leaflets, and reporting inquiries and responses to the inquiries, which have been implemented under the city’s PRG, are one-way communication tools (Arnstein 1969). Today, social media can be an effective tool for two-way communication, by offering the potential to co-produce discourse (Chatfield and Reddick 2018). The SMG and district offices make efforts to use social media, to enable social media users to easily communicate with the city and local government; this measure can promote communication. The vast majority of social media posts are in Korean, although the SMG and some district offices sometimes post follow-up messages in the languages of immigrants to the country, including English and Chinese. More responsive communication between citizens, both native Koreans and immigrants, and formal-active participants could foster mutual understanding, build trust, and encourage participation to pursue the shared objectives through collective action (Putnam 1995).
5.4 Polycentric Governance Based on Participation in Flood Risk Management
Polycentric and multilayered institutions, collaboration, and participation help society adaptively manage disaster risks (Djalante et al. 2012). Seoul’s PRG adopts a polycentric and multilayered structure as the city’s FRM is coordinated with three national ministries and various actors are engaged horizontally (for example, researchers and local government agencies) and vertically (for example, district offices, sub-district offices, and LPOs). These features of PRG require careful management since multilayered governance frameworks may cause inflexibility or dissonant institutions if there is insufficient connection among actors (Huck et al. 2020). As explained earlier, the SMG tried but failed to successfully operate district-level FRM and had to return to a city-level FRM. Vij (2023) pointed out a lack of central direction as a major difficulty in implementing polycentric governance.
Reflecting on its experience, we intend to highlight the role of the SMG in the polycentric structure of the city’s FRM PRG. While the current PRG requires various actors’ participation and contribution, we think there needs to be an actor group that can play a guiding role that gives direction to the actors to run PRG more effectively. The SMG is well situated to provide clear direction for the multiple actors in the current risk governance for FRM, given its administrative authority over the whole city. Using the authority, the SMG can promote other actors’ participation and lead the PRG process to a more equitable and effective participatory FRM.
6 Conclusion
In this study of flood risk management in Seoul, South Korea, we examined challenges and opportunities for citizens to participate in flood risk governance, through documents, interviews, and surveys. In Seoul’s flood risk management (FRM), multiple actors, whom we categorized as formal-active and informal actors, are engaged. Citizens engaged in local public organizations have proactively contributed to the city’s FRM through cooperation with local officials and through mechanisms that the city has developed. Moreover, the city has developed a strong capacity for participatory risk governance through the local public organizations (LPOs). In contrast, ordinary citizens tend not to make proactive contributions to the city’s FRM, but they show the potential to participate more actively. Based on this potential, we see room for the city to expand the range of participation and thus reap greater benefits from participatory risk governance (PRG).
Formal-active participants have carried out the FRM measures at the city and local levels; however, they mentioned challenges, including citizens’ lack of flood risk awareness, lack of self-help spirit, and low prioritization of FRM. In contrast to the concerns of formal-active PRG participants, informal participants showed a high level of risk awareness and acknowledged a need for FRM. The informal participants showed low self-reliance in enacting flood risk preparedness and response actions and a low level of knowledge on preparedness and response actions, which indicates a tendency of dependence on the government to take care of flood risk. This lack of individual responsibility undermines citizens’ autonomous motivation to take charge of reducing neighborhood-scale flood risks. While a lack of knowledge to act can be influenced by individual capacities or available resources, it may not be fair to attribute it all to the capacities or resources, given that the formal-active participants have made various efforts to inform the citizens of FRM actions and provided tools (for example, flood defense equipment) and opportunities (for example, reaching out to check individual flood risks of vulnerable residents). In addition, we found that informal participants lack trust in formal-active participants and their capabilities to manage neighborhood-level risks; this suggests a long-term challenge for effective PRG since building trust cannot typically be achieved in the short term.
Given the challenges and opportunities from our results, participatory FRM in Seoul would benefit from outreach strategies that encourage individual responsibility by highlighting the increased efficacy of risk reduction efforts in which individuals, communities, and government entities partner in FRM actions. Two-way communication between formal-active and informal participants in PRG or stronger efforts to garner input from individual citizens throughout the FRM process could be helpful in enhancing trust and developing a sense of empowerment in citizens and communities. Implementation of these steps would help formal-active participants to foster a sense of value for citizen participation in FRM and would enhance knowledge exchange between formal-active and informal participants and improve mutual understanding of their roles and responsibilities in FRM. We recommend a change in the style of communication between citizens and formal-active participants from largely one-way and top-down education, that flows from formal-active participants to citizens, to knowledge exchange based on cultivating an attitude of mutual respect for each other’s perspectives, capabilities, and efforts.
This study contains some limitations, such as using convenience sampling strategies in the survey data collection, which may have biased the results, and not investigating the details of the socioeconomic or political conditions in the two districts, which may have affected local administrative and institutional efficiency. While we attempted to gather the information on the survey respondents’ socioeconomic status, the respondents hesitated to answer and left the questions unanswered; we statistically analyzed the various contexts, including the elderly population, the rate of low-income households (for example, recipients of National Basic Livelihood Security5), the foreign population, and the size of LPOs, to name a few. These statistics do not seem to show either meaningful differences or potential interpretations regarding FRM. Therefore, we left the detailed analysis of local contexts influencing FRM for a future study and here focused on the overall structure and operation of flood risk governance. Notwithstanding these limitations, the lessons from the study would be worth sharing to facilitate shifting Seoul’s PRG from government-centered prevention of floods to shared-government and citizen responsibility for FRM.
Acknowledgments
We thank Prof. Ashley Coles (Texas Christian University), Prof. Christopher Scott (Penn State University), Prof. Diana Liverman and Prof. Connie Woodhouse (both at the University of Arizona) for their constructive feedback on this research project. We especially thank officials with the Seoul Metropolitan Government, Guro-gu and Gwangjin-gu local government offices, and sub-district offices, who participated in interviews as well as provided data, and all interviewees with local public organizations who participated in this research. Funding for this study was provided by the University of Arizona School of Geography, Development and Environment, Graduate and Professional Student Council, and Global Change Graduate Interdisciplinary Program.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
In contrast to paved surfaces, green spaces and parks absorb and store a portion of urban runoff. Historically, cities have made fewer investments in green space and park amenities in low socioeconomic neighborhoods (Hoffimann et al. 2017). Thus, low socioeconomic neighborhoods have been associated with a lack of urban green spaces, higher runoff, and increased flood risk.
Given that almost all of the LPO interviewees are native Koreans, the aforementioned activities were conducted in Korean. This suggests a potential blind spot regarding both engagement of non-Korean speakers in PRG and risk-related communication with non-Korean speakers.
As of March 2021, the Ministry of Environment has released a flood risk map of the floodplains of all rivers and streams throughout the country; this includes the area of Seoul.
Regarding the responsibility, the questionnaire describes it as the FRM process, including preventing, responding to, and recovering from floods for all actors.