Gender, vulnerability, and poverty predict the experience of climate change events among coastal community members in Sabak Bernam, Selangor

This study aimed to profile the socioeconomic backgrounds of respondents through gender-disaggregated analysis, identify their diverse experiences of climate change, and assess the roles of gender, vulnerability, and poverty in individuals’ experiences of climate events. Data were collected in Sabak Bernam, Selangor, through a specially developed questionnaire with prompts about household profiles, vulnerability type, household income, and climate change experience. A total of 274 respondents participated, with equal proportions of male and female participants. The mean age was 47.79 years, mean household income was RM3,914.38, and the average number of household members was 4.5. Five climate change events were reported: floods, storms, high tides, droughts, and landslides. Overall, 93.88% of respondents reported such events. Floods were the most frequently reported experience, 27.44%, followed by storms, 25.62%, and high tides, 20.63%. Men were more likely than women to have experienced high tides, 61.54%; droughts, 55.22%; and storms, 54.87%. Women’s experiences were generally similar, although with slightly lower exposure than men across most climate events. Notably, all reported cases of landslides came from men, 100%. One binary logistic regression model was tested, with DV=1 representing respondents who had experienced climate change events and DV=0 representing respondents without such experience. The independent variables were gender, vulnerability type, and poverty level. The binary logistic regression model was significant, p<0.05, with 24.2% of the variance in the dependent variable explained by the independent variables. Two significant predictors were gender, with odds=15.036, and age, with odds=2.842. Male respondents were 15.036 times more likely than female respondents to experience climate change events, and younger respondents were 2.862 times more likely to experience climate change events than older adults. In conclusion, the respondents reported in this paper were of mature age and came from low-income households with a small number of household members. A high majority experienced climate change events, especially floods, with male and younger respondents being more likely to experience climate change events.

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