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Globally, climate change is exacerbating the impacts of climate-related, natural hazards including avalanches. However, there is limited knowledge about how small and remote communities are affected by and perceive the effects of a changing climate with hazards that increase in intensity and/or frequency. Consequently, there is a call for more actionable and interdisciplinary climate adaptation research, which takes its starting point in understanding the local concerns of people living in small remote communities.

This paper test the photovoice method to gather respondents’ perceptions of the place in which they live and the hazards they face through personal narratives of photographs.

Despite its limitations, the photovoice method was found to be a suitable tool for gaining valuable insights into the communities while ensuring comfort and enjoyment for both participants and the researcher.

The findings also show that despite its limitations photovoice is a useful method for shedding light on risk perception, place attachment and resiliency in communities facing the risk of natural hazards. The study found that place attachment is an important factor to consider in disaster risk management, policy and decision making.

The paper adds to a growing body of literature surrounding the relationship between place attachment and community resilience to climate-related natural hazards. The authors examined the impact of place attachment on community resilience, focusing on two rural and remote villages located in the Westfjords in Iceland – Patreksfjörður and Flateyri. Societal aspects of natural hazards have hitherto been hardly addressed in Iceland and to our knowledge the applied method has not been tested before in such a setting. The photovoice method is tested to gather respondents’ perceptions of the place in which they live and the hazards they face through personal narratives of photographs.

Gravity models and analogue store approaches are inadequate in predicting purchases in neighbourhood stores. This requires a new theoretical and empirically tested approach.

We use the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) to determine which factors predict the choice for a new neighbourhood store. We develop a suitable model using a structural equation model with survey data from two cases in which all households in the catchment areas were surveyed both before and after the store opened.

We find the TPB to be appropriate for predicting store choice. Beliefs about one-stop shopping, social pressure from family members and car availability are most important in explaining the intention to shop in the planned store. These factors also explain the actual shopping in this store after opening.

Our model predicts store choice before a store opens. Using a two-wave survey, we avoid ex-post rationalisation and show that, at least in our cases, quality, price and assortment do not predict store choice.