World­wide, flood risk is on the rise. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, the UNDRR fears that humanity’s risk per­cep­tion is bro­ken. Low-inten­si­ty, high-fre­quen­cy exten­sive floods are cumu­la­tive­ly the most dam­ag­ing phe­nom­e­non. How­ev­er, risk per­cep­tion in the con­text of exten­sive floods is wide­ly under-researched. Indone­sia is on the nexus of low-risk per­cep­tions, exten­sive flood risk and pover­ty. There­fore, a socio-eco­nom­i­cal­ly mar­gin­alised and fre­quent­ly flood­ed urban kam­pong where res­i­dents appear to exhib­it low lev­els of risk per­cep­tion, serves as a case for this study.

Data was gath­ered through five months of field­work in Pon­tianak, West-Kali­man­tan, con­sist­ing of par­tic­i­pa­to­ry obser­va­tions and semi-struc­tured inter­views. While stud­ies often focus on sub­jec­tive risk per­cep­tion, this study includes the socio-cul­tur­al con­text, and aims to under­stand dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed per­spec­tives on exten­sive flood risk. Results show that exten­sive floods in Tam­be­lan Sampit pri­mar­i­ly lead to indi­rect loss­es. Fur­ther­more, risk per­cep­tion is strong­ly shaped by the exten­sive char­ac­ter­is­tics of floods and the socio-cul­tur­al con­text.

While risk per­cep­tion in the kam­pong is low, we pro­pose that in this spe­cif­ic case the risk per­cep­tion is desen­si­tised rather than bro­ken. Under­stand­ing risk per­cep­tion as desen­si­tised can add nuance to under­stand­ings of people’s expe­ri­ence of (exten­sive) dis­as­ters, explain their behav­iour towards risk and poten­tial­ly inform improved mit­i­ga­tion and adap­ta­tion poli­cies.