As the literature on heat tolerance suggests that the elderly are generally more heat-intolerant and suffer more from the substantial impacts of excessive heat on human health, exacerbated by their higher rate of chronic diseases, it is important to learn how to better protect this vulnerable population. Moreover, many studies have shown that, despite their vulnerability, the elderly do not necessarily perceive themselves as being at risk or see heat waves as a danger to their health. This lower risk perception could hinder their adoption of adaptive behavior. Thus, using the theory of planned behavior and the health belief model, this study aimed at developing a more thorough understanding of what motivates older people from the province of Quebec, Canada, to adopt pro-adaptive behaviors to protect themselves from the heat, to better predict and explain their self-reported heat adaptation behaviors, and to identify their most important beliefs. In this quantitative study, a telephone sample of 1002 persons was used to explore the decision-making process of seniors in a way that led us to illustrate specific variables that could be targeted for awareness raising. All three variables of the theory of planned behavior (i.e., attitude, perceived social pressure, and perceived behavioral control) had a statistically significant impact on intention to adapt, while intention itself was linked to adoption of adaptive behaviors. This shows that increasing elderly people’s intention to adapt can have a positive impact on their adaptation to heat, which could help prevent this at-risk population from suffering the dangerous effects of heat waves.

中文翻译：

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使用计划行为理论来确定老年人群热适应行为背后的关键信念

由于有关耐热性的文献表明，老年人通常更不耐热，并且更容易受到过热对人类健康的重大影响，并因慢性病发病率较高而加剧，因此了解如何更好地保护这一弱势群体非常重要。人口。此外，许多研究表明，尽管老年人很脆弱，但他们并不一定认为自己处于危险之中，或者认为热浪对他们的健康构成威胁。这种较低的风险认知可能会阻碍他们采用适应性行为。因此，本研究使用计划行为理论和健康信念模型，旨在更深入地了解是什么促使加拿大魁北克省的老年人采取适应性行为来保护自己免受高温影响，更好地预测和解释他们自我报告的热适应行为，并确定他们最重要的信念。在这项定量研究中，我们使用了 1002 人的电话样本来探索老年人的决策过程，从而引导我们说明可以针对提高认识的特定变量。计划行为理论的所有三个变量（即态度、感知到的社会压力和感知到的行为控制）对适应意图都有统计上的显着影响，而意图本身与适应行为的采用有关。这表明，增加老年人的适应意愿可以对他们对热的适应产生积极影响，这有助于防止这些高危人群遭受热浪的危险影响。