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Objective and perceived wildfire risk and its influence on private forest landowners’ fuel reduction activities in Oregon’s (USA) ponderosa pine ecoregion

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Title Objective and perceived wildfire risk and its influence on private forest landowners’ fuel reduction activities in Oregon’s (USA) ponderosa pine ecoregion
Names Fischer, A. Paige (creator)
Kline, Jeffrey D. (creator)
Ager, Alan A. (creator)
Charnley, Susan (creator)
Olsen, Keith A. (creator)
Date Issued 2013-09-23 (iso8601)
Note To the best of our knowledge, one or more authors of this paper were federal employees when contributing to this work. This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by the International Association of Wildland Fire and published by CSIRO Publishing. It can be found at: http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/114.htm.
Abstract Policymakers seek ways to encourage fuel reduction among private forest landowners to augment similar
efforts on federal and state lands. Motivating landowners to contribute to landscape-level wildfire protection requires an
understanding of factors that underlie landowner behaviour regarding wildfire. We developed a conceptual framework
describing landowners’ propensity to conduct fuel reduction as a function of objective and subjective factors relating to
wildfire risk. We tested our conceptual framework using probit analysis of empirical data from a survey of non-industrial
private forest landowners in the ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) region of eastern Oregon (USA). Our empirical results
confirm the conceptual framework and suggest that landowners’ perceptions of wildfire risk and propensity to conduct fuel
treatments are correlated with hazardous fuel conditions on or near their parcels, whether they have housing or timber
assets at risk, and their past experience with wildfire, financial capacity for conducting treatments and membership in
forestry and fire protection organisations. Our results suggest that policies that increase awareness of hazardous fuel
conditions on their property and potential for losses in residential and timber assets, and that enhance social networks
through which awareness and risk perception are formed, could help to encourage fuel reduction among private forest
landowners.
Genre Article
Topic fuel treatments
Identifier Fischer, A. P., Kline, J. D., Ager, A. A., Charnley, S., & Olsen, K. A. (2014). Objective and perceived wildfire risk and its influence on private forest landowners’ fuel reduction activities in Oregon’s (USA) ponderosa pine ecoregion. International Journal of Wildland Fire, 23(1), 143-153. doi:10.1071/WF12164

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