Abstract
The United States has experienced an even longer and more intense wildfire season than normal in recent years, largely resulting from drought conditions and a buildup of flammable vegetation. The derived stochastic dynamic model in this study was utilized to evaluate the interaction of wildfire risk mitigation policies for two adjacent landowners under various scenarios of forest benefits while accounting for full awareness of fire externalities. This study also evaluated the effectiveness of cost-share programs and fuel stock regulation and investigated under which scenarios of forest management interests the implementation of these policies encourages risk mitigation behaviors and yields larger reductions in social costs. The findings revealed that social costs significantly reduced after the implementation of cost-share programs and fuel stock regulation. Market-oriented adjacent landowners were more responsive to policy instruments compared to other types of neighboring landowners, and their responsiveness was greater for fuel stock regulation policies than for cost-share programs. Policymakers may introduce extra financial incentives or more rigorous fuel stock regulations to induce nonmarket-oriented landowners to undertake increased fuel management activities.
Highlights
In recent years, the United States has experienced record-breaking wildfires that have increased the importance of reducing private and social losses from fire damages.Wildfires burned a total of about 8.8 million acres in 2018 and 10 million in 2017 [1]
The first subsection presents the outcomes of the base case and it discusses the socially optimal fuel management level, social site value, and social costs under various forest management interests
This study developed a stochastic dynamic model for two adjacent landowners to evaluate the interaction of fuel treatment decisions for two adjacent landowners under various scenarios of forest benefits and to examine how different forest management interests might yield private outcomes that deviate from socially optimal decisions
Summary
The United States has experienced record-breaking wildfires that have increased the importance of reducing private and social losses from fire damages.Wildfires burned a total of about 8.8 million acres in 2018 and 10 million in 2017 [1]. While nonindustrial private landowners, who are often poorly informed about fire risk [3], often cannot control the occurrence of wildfires, they can undertake fire prevention practices to reduce forest damage in the event of a wildfire. Fuel reduction actions, such as prescribed burning and some forms of thinning, can be used to minimize fire damages [4,5] as both the amount and composition of forest fuels impact the intensity and extent of wildfires [6,7,8,9,10,11]. Prior studies have suggested that cost-share programs and fuel stock regulation could reduce social costs and encourage increased fuel management [2]
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