Our MSc student Niels Evers finished his thesis last month on "The effectiveness of municipal climate adaptation policy instruments for households". He compared the measures taken in six different municipalities: Almelo, Enschede, Hardenberg, Hellendoorn, Winterswijk, and Zwolle. These measures are meant to stimulate citizens to have a more climate adaptive garden/house and cover tile removal, a green coach, and subsidies for e.g. green roofs or rain barrels. The main question concerns how often these measures are used by citizens. One result was the number of tiles removed, as seen in the image below. This number did include tiles that the municipalities removed that were on their own managed terrain, so sometimes the numbers were skewed. The thesis summary is below, and the repository link to
download the full thesis is here.
Summary:
To achieve the goals for climate adaptation
set by the National Delta Program (Ministerie van Infrastructuur en Waterstaat
et al., 2024), municipalities are dependent on households taking action. More
than 50% of the surface in urban areas is privately owned (’t salland, 2024).
And together with public areas, this land is needed for measures.
Municipalities use policy instruments to encourage households to take action.
For this reason, 60% of the Dutch municipalities have a subsidy scheme for climate
adaptation measures (Centraal Beheer, 2025). Around the same number of
municipalities participated in an campaign to remove as much tiles as possible
and replace it with green. Last year, 5,5 million tiles were removed in this NK
Tegelwippen competition (NK Tegelwippen, n.d.).
The experience about how to encourage households has been increasing over the
last years, however, the municipalities would like to improve the effectiveness
of their policy instruments. Policy instruments are tools that the
municipalities use to influence the behaviour of households. In this research,
the instruments aim to encourage households to take action to adapt to climate
change. There have been multiple studies on the conceptual level explaining how
an instrument could be more effective. There is not a lot of research done on
policy instruments for climate change adaptation from municipalities to
households. The research that has been done on this topic is often limited to
one instrument or instrument type and uses mostly qualitative data. There has
not been research on the combination of the different policy instrument types
and also not with a quantitative view. The research question is: “How effective
are municipal climate adaptation policy instruments for households, both
individually and in the policy mix?”
Policy instruments cannot be seen as separate elements, but should rather be
seen in a policy mix, consisting out of the entire set of policy instruments.
Four types of instruments are distinguished: communication, economic,
regulation and distributive. Communication refers to all sorts of information
streams from the municipalities to the households, like education, knowledge
exchange and foresighting (Hannon et al., 2023). The economic instrument type
refers to incentives or disincentives (Hannon et al., 2023), this can be in the
form of subsidies or taxes for example. Next to that, there is regulation,
which is about rules and laws (Hannon et al., 2023). This is for instance used in
the building law for new buildings to retain water on own property. Lastly, the
distributive instrument type provides a service or good to remove barriers for
households (Martin et al., 2021).
This study looks into three policy instruments that are commonly applied by
municipalities to encourage households to take action: NK Tegelwippen, the subsidy scheme and
green coaches. This study seeks to understand how they are best applied to
achieve the biggest impact and, therefore, are most effective. Effectiveness
can encompass many different things. In this study, the more applications and
households participating in an instrument, the more effective. A comparative
case study analysis is used, consisting of six municipalities: Almelo,
Enschede, Hardenberg, Hellendoorn, Winterswijk & Zwolle. Those
municipalities were selected based on that they should have similar climate
adaptation challenges, have different policy mixes and be different in size.
This study combines both quantitative and qualitative data. The qualitative
data was collected using policy papers, websites and interviews with civil
servants of the municipalities. The quantitative data directly showed the
number of households making use of the instrument or the impact that those
households made (e.g. number of removed tiles). The number of removed tiles per
1000 inhabitants for each municipality fluctuates over the years. The bigger
municipalities, which also make use of a tile pick-up service, had the most
removed tiles. Zwolle has the highest yearly average with around 900 removed
tiles per 1000 inhabitants. During the interviews, it became clear that for
some municipalities, over 50% of tiles are removed from public areas. This
makes it difficult to make statements about the effectiveness of the instrument
in encouraging households to take action.
The green coaches have only been active for one or two years at the selected
municipalities. The number of applications is low, less than half a per cent of
households made use of the green coaches. This is sometimes because it is not
well known yet, but also because of the limited capacity of the green coaches.
The impact of the green coaches is therefore difficult to measure. Each
municipality offers different measures that are eligible for subsidies. All
selected municipalities have subsidies for measures to prevent water nuisance.
4 out of 6 municipalities have a more integrated subsidy scheme and also make
measures such as greening, trees or a green roof eligible.
By looking at the distribution of measures, it becomes clear that above 50% of
the applications are done for rain barrels. During the interviews, it became
clear that the NK Tegelwippen is part of a bigger instrument: ‘Targeted
actions’. These actions are temporary and focused on concrete incentives. Next
to the NK Tegelwippen, there are also examples of a tree sharing day
(boomdeeldag) or a rain barrel action in which rain barrels can be bought for a
reduced price.
This research shows that targeted actions are the most effective instrument for
mobilising households to take climate adaptation measures, as they reach large groups
quickly and can be tailored to specific neighbourhoods or climate-adaptive
interventions. Their effectiveness arises from the combination of financial
incentives, targeted communication, and distributive services, which together
ensure both speed and inclusivity. In contrast, subsidy schemes reach fewer
households and rely heavily on residents’ initiative, while physical
sustainability hubs and online platforms are not effective as stand-alone
instruments.
Green Coaches show strong potential, particularly when combined with targeted communication
and modest financial incentives, as demonstrated by Winterswijk. Scaling these
strategically could enhance participation among households that are typically
harder to reach. Municipalities should therefore focus on instrument
combinations that maximise reach, lower barriers, and address local climate
challenges, while also improving standardised data collection and monitoring to
generate actionable insights.
Overall, this thesis demonstrates that successful municipal climate adaptation
policy is less about introducing new instruments and more about using existing
ones in a coordinated, evidence-based way. Targeted actions set the benchmark,
Green Coaches hold promise if scaled strategically, and subsidies should be
re-evaluated to go beyond purely financial incentives. By combining insights
from implementation, monitoring, and research, municipalities can develop more
effective and equitable strategies to support households in adapting to climate
change.
