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Coastal flooding often exceeds homeowners’ capacity to cope with repetitive damages and profoundly disrupts their livelihoods. Permanent relocation has been proposed as a solution for some coastal areas experiencing recurrent flooding and anticipating acceleration of impacts. However, it is unclear if homeowners living in such areas would support this strategy, where they would choose to go, and why. This study evaluates the willingness to relocate and the reasoning behind it among rural and urban homeowners residing in coastal high-risk areas. The rural versus urban comparison explores how attitudes toward relocation differ between these settings with distinct sociodemographic, economic, and cultural profiles. A mail survey administered on the Eastern Shore, Maryland, and in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area, Virginia, measured how willingness to relocate differs across the socioeconomic spectrum, prior flood exposure, concerns with flood impacts, and preferences for relocation destination. The survey responses were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results show that more than one-third of respondents would consider relocating. The willingness to relocate was marginally influenced by socioeconomic factors and flood experiences and instead was significantly correlated with the risk of disastrous flooding, inadequate insurance compensation, and worsening crime. However, data show a clear shift in relocation support and the distance of the preferred destination from minor to significant flooding. Rural respondents are slightly less likely to relocate than urban ones. Descriptive statistics indicate nuanced differences in flood experiences, reasons to relocate, and preferences for a new destination between rural and urban populations. 

The research on coastal hazards predicts substantial adverse impacts of chronic and episodic flooding on populated coastal areas. Despite the growing evidence about anticipated flood risks, many coastal communities are still not adapting. The observed disconnect between science on physical impacts and adaptation decisionmaking in part reflects stakeholders’ inability to envision the implications of these impacts on socioeconomic systems and the built environment in their jurisdictions. This inertia is particularly apparent in the discourse on flood-driven displacement and relocation. There is a lack of knowledge about direct and indirect flood impacts on community attributes and services that contribute to relocation decision-making. This study holistically evaluates the flood exposure on municipal features vital for socioeconomic stability, livelihoods, and quality of life across spatiotemporal scales. As such, it uses a more nuanced approach to relocation risk assessment than those solely focused on direct inundation impacts. It measures flood exposure of land use, land cover, and sociocultural and economic dimensions that are important drivers of relocation in selected rural and urban areas. The approach uses a 50-year floodplain to delineate populated coastal locations exposed to 2% Annual Exceedance Probability (AEP) storm surge projections adjusted for 2030, 2060, and 2090 sea level rise (SLR) scenarios. It then evaluates the potential impacts of this flood exposure on different types of land uses and critical socioeconomic assets in rural (Dorchester and Talbot Counties, Maryland, USA) and urban (Cities of Hampton, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA) settings. The results show that some urban land uses, such as open space, military and mixed-use, and rural residential and commercial areas, might experience significantly more flooding. There are also notable differences in the baseline flood exposure and the anticipated rate and acceleration in the future among selected communities with significant implications for relocation planning.