SRA-E Lisbon 2017

Due to climate change, extreme heat weather events (EHWEs) such as heatwaves, are becoming more frequent, intense, and long-lasting (Lefevre et al., 2015), presenting increasing demands to citizens and health authorities (WHO, 2015). One way of responding to this challenge is through understanding how citizens appraise the demands posed by EHWEs (e.g. perceived constraints on daily activities) and resources to cope with those demands (e.g. perceived availability of alternatives to deal with those constraints). This knowledge may enable, for example, evidence-based risk communications and interventions to potentiate citizen’s resilience and adaptation to EHWEs. However, little is known about citizens’ appraisal of demands posed by EHWEs and the resources to cope with those demands. To better understand this, a theoretical approach based on the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat (e.g. Blascovich, 2008; Blascovich & Mendes, 2001) was created and used to perform an exploratory qualitative study with the goal of identifying citizens’ mental models of EHWEs. Moreover, this allowed the exploration of differences in the appraisal of EHWEs demands vs. resources to cope with those demands, as result from an experimental manipulation of a prototypical EHWE (e.g. affective framing). For that we requested participants to evoke a prototypical (positive/negative/no-frame) EHWE, followed by a semi-structured qualitative interview that allowed us to explore citizens’ mental models of EHWEs and differences in the appraisal of demands vs. resources. Intentions of protection against EHWEs were also collected. The results of this study will be presented at the symposium, and its implications to the promotion of citizen’s resilience and adaptive potential to EHWEs will be discussed.