Studies have argued that regret promotes behavioral change, as it embodies a painful lesson. Even in the context of a disaster, regret may facilitate behaviors that mitigate individual disaster-harm such as earlier evacuation and disaster-prevention actions. Through two surveys conducted on the 2018 Japan floods, we investigated (i) whether people experienced regret immediately after the flood disaster and (ii) whether such regrets would facilitate people’s harm-reducing behavior. In Study 1, the disaster victims were asked to recall their disaster experiences. As a result, we found that they regretted their failure to evacuate earlier and their lack of disaster-prevention behavior. In Study 2, approximately a year after the disaster, respondents reported how likely they were to regret their behavior at the time and how likely they had been engaged in potentially disaster-harm-reducing behavior. The results showed that regret predicted both evacuation acts and disaster-prevention behavior after the 2018 Japan flood. Further, we discuss future studies on regret and disaster-related behavior.

The purpose of this study is to develop a Japanese version of the Shopping Consciousness Scale (SCS) and to examine its construct validity. Factor analyses of data by 520 nonprobability online panels in a Web survey (in 2016) confirmed a hypothesized two-factor structure (the hedonic and utilitarian), and each subscale showed high internal consistency. Correlation analyses of data by 568 nonprobability online panels in a Web survey (in 2018) confirmed high test-retest reliability for each subscale. Furthermore, the correlations of each subscale with other measures (window shopping and frugality) provided support for the construct validity of each subscale. In many cases, these relationships were not affected by variables such as gender, household income, and discretionary income. In addition, we examined sociodemographics and personality predictors for each subscale. These factors were not as strongly related to these predictors as expected. Finally, the implications of these findings and the usefulness of SCS for online consumer behavior research are discussed.