RAPID: Examining Recency of 2024 Wildfire Season Exposures as an Antidote to the Intangibility of Public Policy Dilemma

Building support for proactive policies that mitigate public risk is a longstanding challenge across sectors including public health, wildfires, invasive species control, cybersecurity, among others. The tendency for policymakers to favor reactive solutions while neglecting proactive preventative efforts is perhaps most evident in the context of natural disasters. The benefits of investment in risk reduction can be intangible, particularly if it avoids a disaster, but the mobilization of aid to communities experiencing a natural disaster provides visible outcomes. This illustrates a broader public policy-behavioral dilemma called The Intangibility of Public Policy. The implication is that intangibility of outcomes will cause people to undervalue risk reduction investments and policies, which will lead to excessive levels of public risk. The project involves a survey experiment that leverages wildfire exposure and forest management to investigate the behavioral implications of the intangibility of wildfire risk reduction. Using secondary data, the researchers identify wildfire relevant locations (zip codes) that were exposed and not exposed to a Type 1/severe wildfire in 2024 and that had hazardous fuels forest thinning in the previous two-year period (pre-thinning) or are planned to have thinning in the subsequent two-year periods (post-thinning). Across the wildfire and management conditions, the survey experiment considers (i) how people perceive the reduction in wildfire risk from previous and planned forest thinning, (ii) people’s preferences for the allocation of wildfire risk reduction investment between prevention and suppression activities, and (iii) people’s willingness to take individual action to reduce wildfire risks. Comparisons across exposure and management conditions provide insights to how people perceive, respond, and support risk reduction following a disaster. This research builds on established interdisciplinary insights in behavioral economics, risk perception, and public policy, with a focus on natural disaster management. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.