Valuing disaster risk reduction neighborhood interventions in informal settlements of Latin American and the Caribbean
Department
Economics, Finance and Quantitative Analysis
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-1-2020
Abstract
© 2020 Arrieta et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This study assesses the dollar benefit of a neighborhood approach intervention on disaster risk reduction in small-sized, densely populated, and hazard-prone informal settlements across Latin American and Caribbean countries. We use a life satisfaction approach that assigns a dollar value to gains in wellbeing associated with the neighborhood approach intervention. Our primary data was a survey to a sample of 349 beneficiaries from small towns in Haiti, Guatemala, and Jamaica, and in major cities’ surrounded areas of Peru, Colombia, and Honduras. Out of 14 interventions, we found that community empowerment, physical works in public spaces and urban gardens/food approaches produced a gain of USD1,038 to USD1,241 to individual beneficiaries. Our study suggests a large benefit associated with the neighborhood approach intervention. It also shows that the life satisfaction approach is a promising method for the valuation of non-market and public goods, especially for countries where data on hazards and risks is not available to help monetize risk reductions.
Journal Title
PLoS ONE
Volume
15
Issue
11 November
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
10.1371/journal.pone.0242409