Proactive responses to increasing wildfire risk: the (mis)alignment of public preferences and management priorities

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Abstract
Wildfire management strategies in the United States historically have focused on suppression activities, but recent work in wildfire policy and ecology has called for a shift in the management paradigm towards prevention. Suppression however remains the budget priority. We design a survey to measure the U.S. public’s preferences for investing public resources to federal wildfire prevention activities. We consider absolute investment as well as investment relative to suppression. Results indicate the public prefers much greater investment in prevention than federally appropriated levels. While people correctly identify the misalignment, they underestimate the extent of the difference between public and agency priorities. We also examine individual actions to reduce the risk of future wildfires. We explore people’s willingness to voluntarily join a local risk-reduction program to reduce community wildfire risk. We find that a large segment of respondents are not only willing to join but support a mandatory requirement for peers to join. Support for government and local prevention is robust across locations, though wildfire risk and exposure matter at the margin. Overall, results indicate that public priorities better align with the expert advice than current practices by wildfire management.
Funding Information
  • National Science Foundation (2505748)

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