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Resettlement preferences from landslide prone areas in the Bamboutos caldera: Willingness to move, reasons to stay

Midas Baert
Information about resettlement preferences is important for voluntary resettlement programs to be a successful disaster risk reduction strategy. This study combines semi-structured interviews and structured household surveys which includes a discrete choice experiment to elicit ex-ante resettlement preferences of households that live in landslide prone areas. We use a mixed logit model and latent class model to assess resettlement preferences and to investigate differences in preferences between socioeconomic groups. We find that, in general, people are willing to resettle away from a landslide prone area to a safer area and to an area that is accessible by roads. The willingness to resettle increases when additional arable land is provided, when the extended family can come along and when monetary compensation is offered. However, the relative importance of these attributes varies among socioeconomic groups. More wealthy households show a greater willingness to resettle and attach more importance to improved road infrastructure, while poorer respondents are less willing to resettle and attach more importance to whether their family can move along. Although the majority of households are willing to resettle, previous resettlement attempts were not always successful and individual willingness is not translated into actions. This can be attributed to the fact that little unused land is available in highly populated areas which may results in border disputes at the resettlement destination. In addition, resettling is costly and the effective monetary compensation received by resettlers is often low (and not in line with the government’s promises). Finally, group dynamics also play a role: households mainly want to resettle along with their (extended) family. Hence, if there is no consensus among a large part of the community to resettle, the status quo remains.