1. Introduction
Climate change has impacted the environment and various aspects of human life in recent decades. Its immediate indicator is the change in global temperature [
1], which has risen by nearly 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880 [
2]. Floods, droughts, tropical cyclones, and earthquakes are some of the catastrophic impacts, which have happened more frequently across the globe. Fang et al. [
3] reported that there have been 13,386 climate disasters globally since 1970, resulting in 3.6 million deaths, 7.7 billion casualties, and USD 3.3 trillion economic losses. In the future, the occurrences of climate disasters are anticipated to increase in intensity and frequency [
4]. For instance, Lenderink and Van Meijgaard [
5] predicted that extreme rain events would become more frequent in the future. Similarly, Taherkhani et al. [
6] projected that extreme weather phenomena would continue to increase due to the sea-level rise. Indonesia has been impacted by extreme weather severely. From 1815 to 2019, there were 10,438 floods, 6050 landslides, 2124 droughts, and 1914 forest fires [
7]. Aside from fatality, climate disasters such as these cause significant ecological, economic, social, and physiological losses [
8].
Literature has extensively documented the impacts of climate disasters with various social indicators. There are two strands of research on the nexus between climate disasters and society. The first focuses on the association with economic losses [
9,
10,
11,
12]. For example, Dasgupta, Laplante, Murray, and Wheeler [
9] examined the economic impact of sea-level rise in 84 developing countries, claiming that increasing sea level per meter can reduce agricultural land by 7%, which means 10% of GDP losses in the agricultural sectors. Ullah, Shah, Saqib, Yaseen, and Haider [
12] assessed the households’ vulnerability to floods in Pakistan, highlighting the vulnerability of the daily wagers as they lost their primary source of income. Due to their financial limitations, these residents living in poverty were also unable to mitigate the impact of floods, i.e., reconstruct their house or move to a safer place. Similarly, Nguyen, Le, and Vo [
11] compared the households in flood-prone areas and safer areas and found that the former earned less income and had a higher expenditure. They also reported that climate disasters caused 57% of economic losses in Vietnam, and 37.3% were affected by the floods. In Indonesia, Djalante, Garschagen, Thomalla, and Shaw [
10] estimated that between 1900 to 2015, the total economic losses due to climate disasters were at approximately USD 44 million, and the death toll was 238,000.
The impact of climate disasters on well-being and intangible assets can also be severe [
13]. The death toll and physical damages leave residents traumatized, and the environmental destruction causes biodiversity loss and disturbed ecosystems [
14]. Therefore, the second strand of research focuses on the association between climate disasters and residents’ well-being [
15,
16,
17], which can either be physiological, i.e., health problems or psychological, i.e., stress and anxiety [
18]. A study involving 422 respondents from France, Hudson, Botzen, Poussin, and Aerts [
17] found that climate disasters, especially floods, reduced residents’ subjective well-being. Calvo, Arcaya, Baum, Lowe, and Waters [
15] compared the happiness level of the Americans before and after Hurricane Katrina and found a significant decrease even after a year had passed. Hamama-Raz, Palgi, Leshem, Ben-Ezra, and Lavenda [
16] revealed that the subjective well-being of the Filipinos was negatively impacted because they lost their home and resources and experienced disturbances to their physical health.
The severity of the impact may depend on socio-economic and demographic profiles, according to Sam et al. [
19], and the difference is usually stark between urban and rural areas. The urban infrastructure is often more developed, and residents have more stable income sources. Meanwhile, the rural infrastructure is not as advanced, and most residents depend on natural resources for income [
20] as they primarily work in the agriculture, fisheries, and forestry sectors. Therefore, climate disasters may affect rural and urban dwellers in different magnitudes. Although previous literature has documented the impact of climate disasters on subjective well-being, research has not compared how the effect may be different between the urban and rural areas. Therefore, this study seeks to address the gaps and is motivated to support the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal of “no one must be left behind” by calling for the reduction of urban–rural inequality and the improvement of mental health and wellness for all humanity.
This study contributes to the literature from two essential aspects. First, this study provides the comparison impact of climate disaster subjectively between urban and rural residents. Second, we investigate the disaggregated impact of climate disaster on the subjective well-being by household income level. The existing literature mainly examined the homogenous impact of climate disaster [
17,
18,
21,
22]. Residents from different income levels, on the other hand, may behave differently when impacted by a climate disaster. The current study aims to investigate the impact of climate disaster on subjective well-being based on the urban and rural typology model. The finding will have a practical implication on urban and rural development policy making and climate change mitigation.
4. Discussion
This section begins by discussing the subjective well-being impact of climate disaster on Indonesian residents, specifically comparing the subjective impact of climate disaster between rural and urban residents. In general, this study revealed that climate disaster reduced overall life satisfaction of Indonesian residents. Residents who have experienced more climate disasters tend to have lower life satisfaction than those who have experienced fewer disasters. This is because life satisfaction is a long-term indicator of subjective well-being [
20], influenced by infrastructure damages, the grief for death, income reduction, and health issues [
15,
16,
17]. This finding is in line with previous studies that show a negative association between climate disasters and life satisfaction in Ukraine [
44], Japan [
45], and America [
46], although these studies did not investigate the effect of climate disasters on specific groups such as urban and rural.
Furthermore, this study also makes the first attempt by investigating the different impact of climate disaster on subjective well-being among rural and urban residents. The finding indicated that climate related disasters do not play an essential role in urban residents’ subjective well-being. However, they significantly reduce rural residents’ subjective well-being, including their happiness and life satisfaction. This finding suggests that rural residents are more vulnerable to climate disasters. There are two tentative explanations. First, the infrastructure in the rural areas is not well developed, such as roads, electricity, and education facilities. Second, rural residents usually depend on natural resources as the primary source of their income, such as agriculture, livestock, forestry, and fisheries sectors. Hence, when these sectors are affected by climate disasters, most rural residents lose their income, and it is difficult to recover from the climate disaster’s damage. Meanwhile, urban residents have more stable jobs, so it is easier to recover from the climate disaster’s damage.
Research often attributes the increasing frequency of natural disasters to climate change [
47,
48]. These disasters are considered imminent threats to human life, causing infrastructure damage, losses in productive assets, death tolls, and casualties [
49]. In Pakistan, for example, households lost their livelihoods because they depended on the agricultural sector, which was severely impacted by a flooding disaster since 2010 [
12]. Empirical evidence from past research shows how climate disasters have caused many casualties. For example, heatwaves in 1981–2010 resulted in deaths by respiratory diseases in Europe [
50]. In France, the heatwave in 2003 caused 70,000 deaths; this subsequently prompted the French authorities to establish the Health Watch Warning System [
51]. Natural disasters like these cause not only physical health problems but also induce stress and anxiety [
17]. This study confirms that climate disasters negatively impact subjective well-being in the long term, measured by perceived life satisfaction.
Identifying vulnerable people and locations at risk of natural disasters is still debatable in the international literature. Our study claims that natural disasters have a higher impact on rural (as opposed to urban) areas and low-income communities (
Table 6). This may be caused by poor development plans in vulnerable areas such as the rural and remote areas, indicating that the losses and damages should not solely be attributed to climate change. Raju and da Costa [
52] also claimed that ‘climate’ or ‘natural’ losses and casualties are also closely linked to vulnerability, which is often man-made through unplanned urbanization, structural inequality, and marginalization based on religion, caste, class, ethnicity, gender, or age. Vulnerability is thus a result of social and political processes, including poor governance. Raju et al. [
53] also argue that blaming nature or climate change absolves people’s responsibility and could be treated as a political narrative. In other words, city administrations need to evaluate the social and physical vulnerabilities before drawing any conclusions as to what causes the severe losses and damages.
5. Conclusions
Based on the cross-sectional data from 7110 Indonesian residents with climate disaster experience, we used an ordered probit model to estimate the subjective well-being between urban and rural residents. In general, the finding indicates that climate disasters do not significantly affect happiness, but they negatively affect life satisfaction substantially. Interestingly, the disaggregate estimation from urban and rural residents shows that climate disasters do not significantly affect the urban residents. However, they significantly impact the rural residents. This result confirmed that residents living in rural areas are more vulnerable to climate disasters than residents in urban areas. We also found that subjective well-being is significantly influenced by gender, marital status, health condition, income, and possession of a television, private vehicle, and financial savings, and it is negatively and significantly influenced by age.
Given the strong impact of climate disasters on rural residents’ subjective well-being, this study suggests developing targeted climate disasters adaptation and mitigation policy, including developing resilient rural infrastructure, upskilling rural workers, and improving the education facility, including natural information warning systems so that residents can anticipate and mitigate the damage.