Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce an analytical framework to define and interpret heterogenous risk behaviour within communities facing natural hazard. By employing a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, the paper presents a categorization of “risk-styles” that are commonly used by Jakartan riverbank settlers facing recurrent risk. Unlike the more common concept of “flood-coping strategies”, the notion of risk-styles extends the analysis of responses directly related to floods and involves a broader set of risk and poverty practices. The proposed analytical framework is likely to be useful for future research on the topic of understanding heterogenous risk behaviour, particularly for systemic comparisons of human responses to natural hazard in other parts of the world.

Design/methodology/approach: The data underlying this paper were obtained during a year of extensive anthropological fieldwork in 2010 and 2011, in one of the most flood-prone riverbank settlements in Jakarta, Indonesia. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods were used to obtain data in the field, while the analyses of risk-styles was based on quantitative and qualitative analyses of the survey results and narratives of the respondents of the study.

Findings: This paper defines and analyses four risk-handling styles that are commonly used by inhabitants of a flood-prone riverbank settlement in Jakarta (called Bantaran Kali in this paper) to handle recurrent flood risk. These risk-styles are not completely fixed over time; in particular circumstances, people may and do change their risk-style. However, they should not be considered random or ad hoc. Instead, the study shows how these risk-styles reflect practices that gradually develop during people’s lives in a highly uncertain living environment (characterized by flood risk and poverty-related risks), and are more or less consistently used over longer periods of time and in relation to different types of risk and uncertainty. The paper argues that the four risk-styles described are influenced by factors that may seem unrelated to flood risk at first sight, such as trust in other actors and the government, networks and socializing skills, and the opportunities and limitations that are shaped by the economic and political structures in which riverbank settlers live.

Originality/value: This paper takes a bottom-up perspective and sheds light on the perceptions of a group of marginalized riverbank settlers on the risk of floods. By introducing the notion of risk-styles, it adds nuanced and empirical data that were obtained during extensive fieldwork to the debate on understanding heterogeneous risk behaviour. The originality of the paper lies in the combined use of qualitative and quantitative tools that were used to categorize common risk-styles as well as in the proposed analyses for defining and understanding heterogeneous risk behaviour.