WASHINGTON The National Science Foundation awarded $298,045 in grant funds this week to the University of Colorado to study how homeowners decisions in fire-prone areas can affect wildfire occurrence and impacts.
One of the key parts of the study will look at how homeowners actions affect their neighbors, and whether they tend to play follow-the-leader when it comes to mitigation efforts.
The three-year study seeks to evaluate the effects of risk interdependency, social norms and costs on homeowners wildfire mitigation decisions through a Web-based survey of Western Slope homeowners and a choice experiment, according to its abstract.
A choice experiment involves study participants after they have completed the survey, Hannah Brenkert-Smith said in an email. After the survey, participants are asked to make hypothetical decisions based on varied information about the costs of mitigation, social norms and risk interdependency.
Risk interdependency is one of the cornerstones of the project, Brenkert-Smith said in the email. In short, what one property owner does to reduce the risk on their parcel affects the risk on neighboring parcels neighbors risk levels are interdependent. We are interested in how information about activities and fuel conditions on neighboring parcels influences decision.
Brenkert-Smith is a research associate at the Institute of Behavioral Science at CU-Boulder. She is the principal investigator of the project.
Specific study areas have not yet been identified, Brenkert-Smith said, so she could not comment about whether Durango or Cortez homeowners may be included in the project.
She hopes to learn how a keeping up with the Joneses attitude might affect wildfire prevention.
We are also interested in how information about what neighbors are doing (example: 75 percent of your neighbors are mitigating by thinning trees) may affect decisions to mitigate, she wrote in the email. In other words: Do social norms influence mitigation decisions, and could there be a social tipping point at which a portion of neighbors mitigating leads to more mitigation in a community?
The study also will look at the effects of cost of mitigation on wildfire prevention, Brenkert-Smith said.
This study was chosen out of about 100 proposals, according to the National Science Foundation. Because of privacy issues, federal officials were not able to discuss why hers was funded over others.
More than 9.3 million acres of land burned across the country last year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
This Colorado-based study could have broader impacts, according to the abstract. Information collected could provide direct feedback to forest and fire managers, the abstract says, possibly affecting current programs designed to mitigate wildfire risk.
This competitive grant is welcome news for the millions of Coloradans who live in and around our fire-prone areas, U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., said in a news release. I look forward to seeing this studys conclusions and how we can better encourage homeowners to create defensible space around their homes.
Stefanie Dazio is a student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Durango Herald. You can reach her at sdazio@durangoherald.com.
