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Climate change causes many problems, including non-economic loss and damage. However, non-economic damages are often overlooked as they are hard to measure and not felt by the wider society. The Caribbean region is especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. This project investigates the impacts of climate change on cultural heritage on Bonaire. Expert interviews, participatory mapping, and social media analysis were applied to identify Bonaire’s most important cultural heritage. Overlaying the resulting cultural heritage maps with inundation and flood maps from the different climate change scenarios for 2150 showed the predicted impacts of climate change on tangible cultural heritage. The inundation maps show that the southern tip of the island, with its lighthouse, slave huts, and salt pans, will most likely be flooded in 2150, as well parts of Kralendijk under climate scenarios SSP5-8.5 and SSP5-8.5 LC. The climate change impacts on intangible cultural heritage was predicted by means of expert interviews. Climate change is predicted to impact fisheries, agricultural practices, art, and festivities on Bonaire, even though these results are more exploratory and uncertain. Bonaire’s cultural heritage is at risk and the island will be disproportionately affected by climate change. Decision-makers should take their responsibility to support Bonaire’s adaptation to the expected impacts accordingly

This study adds to an emerging literature on the factors associated with individual perceptions of COVID-19 risks and decision-making processes related to prevention behaviors. We conducted a survey in the Netherlands (N = 3600) in June–July 2020 when the first peak of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations, and deaths had passed, and lockdown measures had been eased. Dutch policies relied heavily on individual prevention behaviors to mitigate a second infection wave. We examine whether biases and heuristics that have been observed in how people perceive and respond to other risks also apply to the newly emergent risks posed by COVID-19. The results indicate that people simplify risk using threshold models and that risk perceptions are related with personal experiences with COVID-19 and experiences of close others, supporting the availability heuristic. We also observe that prevention behavior is more strongly associated with COVID-19 risk perceptions and feelings toward the risk than with local indicators of COVID-19 risks, and that prevention behavior is related with herding. Support for government lockdown measures is consistent with preferences that may contribute to the not-in-my-term-of-office bias. In addition, we offer insights into the role of trust, worry, and demographic characteristics in shaping perceptions of COVID-19 risks and how these factors relate with individual prevention behaviors and support for government prevention measures. We provide several lessons for the design of policies that limit COVID-19 risks, including risk communication strategies and appeals to social norms. Perhaps more importantly, our analysis allows for learning lessons to mitigate the risks of future pandemics.

To overcome the inefficiency in household energy use, energy labels with a grade-like categorical efficiency rating-scale are widely used across the globe. However, presenting energy efficiency information in categories has been found to induce heuristic rather than rational decision-making, known as the "class valuation effect": consumers value the classes, while being inattentive to the actual energy use of the respective appliance. Although replacing the categorical by a continuous scale could eradicate this effect, it has not been formally examined to what extent a continuous scale promotes more rational decision-making. This study investigates whether visualising energy efficiency using a continuous-scale instead of a categorical-scale energy label increases consumers’ awareness of the energy performance of appliances. We experimentally examine this question in an online survey with randomised decision tasks conducted in China and the Netherlands, two countries using energy labels with categorical rating-scale whose populations differ in cognitive style and energy literacy (energy-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours). We find that continuous-scale labels are overall more effective in promoting rational decision-making. For Dutch respondents the effectiveness depends on their holistic cognitive tendency and the type of comparison they are faced with, whereas the Chinese sample is not sensitive to these moderators. Moreover, we find that the different aspects of energy literacy have opposing influence on rational choices: possessing knowledge related to daily-life energy use increases the likelihood of rational decisions, while energy-saving attitudes and behaviours encourage individuals to opt for more energy-efficient appliances even when it is not economically optimal. Based on the results, we suggest to represent energy efficiency on continuous scales as an auxiliary visual information to support purchase decisions. In energy education and information programmes, emphasis should be put on energy knowledge that directly links to daily life, which is well translated into consumers’ conscious decisions.