  Each year, over 15000 requests for mountain rescue are counted in France.
Avalanche accidents represent 39\% of reports, and are therefore our focus in
this study. Modelling the behaviour of mountain accident victims is useful to
develop more accurate rescue and prevention tools. Concretely, we observe the
interference of two heuristics (availability and familiarity) in decision
making when choosing an itinerary in backcountry skiing. We developed a serious
game to evaluate their effect on the probability of engaging in a risky
itinerary, while varying situational and environmental criteria in each
participant (N = 278). The availability heuristic is operationalized by three
situations, an avalanche accident video, a backcountry skiing video and a
neutral context. The familiarity heuristic is operationalized by two criteria,
strong and weak familiarity with the place. Results demonstrate the effects of
both heuristics. Measurements through our serious game are discussed in the
perspective of developing an interactive prevention tool for mitigating the
negative effects of heuristics.
