Vol.:(0123456789) Natural Hazards https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-020-03950-9 1 3 ORIGINAL PAPER Adoption of food‑related preventive behaviours by people having diferent risks and histories of fooding Pierre Valois 1  · David Bouchard 1  · Denis Talbot 1,2,3  · Maxime Caron 1  · Jean‑Sébastien Renaud 2  · Pierre Gosselin 2,4,5  · Johann Jacob 1 Received: 26 July 2018 / Accepted: 18 April 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020 Abstract The increase in the frequency of foods, which is a projected consequence of climate change, can have wide-ranging health and economic impacts. To cope with these foods and to reduce their impacts, households can adopt some preventive behaviours. The main goal of this research was to compare the adoption of food mitigation behaviours in three populations presenting distinctive characteristics with a valid and an invariant measure of behavioural adaptation, as well as a baseline measure (comparison group). The article also aims to test the moderated efect of having experienced a food on the relation between the perception of risk of being fooded and the adoption of preventive behaviours. A survey was conducted in food-prone areas and in some areas that were not at risk in Quebec, Canada, through phone interviews. Results confrmed that people who lived in an at-risk area and had experienced past fooding events are more inclined to adopt preventive behav- iours than people who lived in an at-risk area but had never experienced such an event, and those who lived outside at-risk areas. In addition, our results indicate that the at-risk popu- lation who have never experienced a food engage in few food preventive behaviours. This is worrisome, as their rate of adopting adaptive behaviour is very similar to the one seen in populations living outside at-risk areas, despite the increased risk inherent to their situa- tion. This could be partly explained by our data showing that around a quarter of the at-risk population did not know they were living in a food-prone area. Our results show that com- munication eforts are necessary in order to better inform the population of the risk related to living in a food-prone area and that incentives should be developed to help enhance the rate of preventive behaviours in at-risk populations having never experienced a food. Keywords Climate change · Quebec · Flooding · Disaster preparedness · Household comparison * Pierre Valois Pierre.Valois@fse.ulaval.ca Extended author information available on the last page of the article