Coping Strategies, Stress and Risk Perception in a Natural and Industrial Catastrophe Risk Situation. Esperanza Lopez Vazquez, Doctorante en Psychologie Sociale, Université Toulouse Le-Mirail, 70, rue des Fontaines, 31300 Toulouse, telephone/fax 05-62-21-53-50, e-mail espelv@mail.dotcom.fr

Exposition to natural hazards and industrial accidents is a permanent feature for many city populations who have already suffered a disaster. Occurrences of natural hazards have increased and industrial accidents have been more dangerous and harmful. Our research studies the influence of risk perception in the coping strategies and the stress in Mexican population who lived an industrial accident in 1984 and a big earthquake in 1985. This population are exposed to risk of another encounter with this kind of disasters. We explored the ways of coping with these situations, the stress that it produces and the risk perception of those types of dangers. These stress situations are stressors needing an adaptation. Human behaviour is different in normal situations and in risk situations. The way to cope the risk depend on cognitive appraisals of the significance of the person-environment relationship and the individual personal evaluation of danger and capacities. Coping strategies and anticipation strategies could be active or passive according to the importance of the situation for each person. We found a difference in stress level and coping strategies between people who are exposed to seismic risk and people exposed to industrial risk. They don’t use the same kind of active and passive strategies. Risk perception is not the same in both cases. We observed an important difference in risks classifications : seismic risk is less valorised than industrial risk according to other environment risks.

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