Natural disasters and voter gratitude: What is the role of prevention policies?Post-Print from HAL 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. Keywords: Elections; Natural disasters; Prevention policies; Natural experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in EPCS, EPCS, Apr 2024, Vienne (AUT), Austria There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04756815 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Post-Print from HAL |
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