Location, Location, Location: The Influence of Local Social Complexity on Risk Reduction Strategies in a WUI Settlement

This research builds from existing scholarship to highlight the important role social complexity plays on managing and mitigating wildfire risk in the wildland-urban interface. Researchers employed in-depth interviews to uncover similarities and differences in land and wildfire management preferences among what would appear to many to be a relatively homogenous population in a valley on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, Utah. In spite of demographic similarities, researchers found meaningful and complex differences with regard to the local social context of subpopulations within the drainage. Those differences revolved around subpopulations’ perceptions of factors that intensified wildfire risk as well as preferred strategies to reduce wildfire risk. We link these differences to divergent next steps for catalyzing collective action surrounding wildfire risk in different emergent “communities,” including addressing evacuation concerns or instituting fuels reduction activities. Additionally, our research indicates that some at-risk communities may be totally averse to commonly advocated fuel reduction strategies surrounding homes (i.e., defensible space). We link our findings to existing understandings about community and collective action for wildfire, including ties to existing theoretical approaches for understanding social diversity as it relates to wildfire.