People living along coastlines are facing multiple risks such as flooding, submersion and erosion. The association of growing issues and risks in the face of global change is challenging the responses of individual, collective and public authorities to manage vulnerability of these areas and of their social and ecological components. Depending on the context and on the dominant world views, decision-makers are referring to a multitude of discursive arguments to tell their stories about coastal management and to comment on their adaptation choices. Here, we identify the main frames mobilized in coastal management in three contexts: Cornwall in England, Languedoc in France and Garden Route in South Africa. Through a revision of coastal management documents and a thematic analysis of interviews conducted with institutional decision-makers, we identify the main frames mobilized in the three study cases. Two opposed frames of response emerged across the three sites: the command and control VS living with the risk frames. However, these frames are unequally mobilized through the case studies, and differently introduced and justified. Determinants related to the context, occurrence of extreme events, availability of resources to adapt or socio-political history of the country are pushing towards the use of one of the frame rather than the other. Conversely, the use of the same frame in two different contexts can be explain by a different set of determinants related to the context. This study highlights how adaptation reflects both how different stakeholders diversely interpret information about global change and adaptation, but also how these rationales are strongly context-dependent, leading to diverse cognitive and non-cognitive barriers and opportunities for renewed responses in the face of global change along coastlines. (Texte intégral)