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.
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