The Durability of Social Cohesion: The Effect of Climate-Related Disasters on Voluntary Work

As the number of extreme natural events rapidly increases, it becomes increasingly important to better understand the processes that make communities more resilient. As it is now well-documented that social cohesion and social capital are positively related to recovery rates, what remains to be better investigated is their durability over time, as well as the impact that exogenous disastrous events have on civic participation, which we proxy as voluntary work. Focusing on six flooding events in England, the paper employs a dynamic difference-in-differences (DiD) approach over a ten-year period (2005–2015). Results indicate that voluntary work is positively influenced by a climate-related disaster, and this effect remains stable over time.