A Typology of Everyday Heat Health Behaviors and Implications for System Sustainability Across Scales

Extreme heat has been the leading cause of weather-related mortality in the United States for the past thirty years and is a growing problem under rapidly warming climate conditions. Older people, young children, and those with low income are considered particularly vulnerable but everyone can be at risk. Individuals make a variety of everyday decisions that can protect their health when faced with potential extreme heat exposure. On the shortest timescales and with the least investment, these adaptive actions may simply protect one’s own health or the health of ones’ family (e.g. staying hydrated, changing plans, checking on neighbors). At medium time and investment scales adaptive actions may also have broader energy system implications (e.g. using air conditioning or fans, or going to a cooling center or public air conditioned space). And, at the longest time scales and with the most investment, heat-health adaptive actions may have implications for public health, energy and infrastructure systems (e.g. installing air conditioning, home weatherization, and migration or displacement). As the climate continues to rapidly warm differentially around the globe, regional variation in the public perception of heat-health risk and tolerance for adaptive action is required to understand the implications of this threat on public health, and to make projections for future energy and infrastructure systems. The typology of everyday heat-health behaviors will be illustrated using evidence from an online stratified survey of Vermont, USA residents (N = 1818) that was conducted in the late summer of 2022 using social-psychological theories of behavior change including the theory of planned behavior and the transtheoretical model of behavior change. Broader system implications are be extrapolated.