Small Forest Owners’ Response to Wildfire Risk Within a Management-Logic Framework

• Published in: Small-scale forestry Vol. 21; no. 2; pp. 297 - 323
• Main Authors: Novais, Ana, Canadas, Maria João
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.06.2022; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Agricultural Economics; Agriculture; Behavior; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Cluster analysis; Decision making; Economic impact; Economics; Environmental Economics; Environmental Management; Environmental risk; Expected utility; Expenditures; Forest management; Forestry; Forestry Management; Forests; Life Sciences; Original Research; Perception; Perceptions; Profitability; Risk perception; Risk reduction; Wildfires; Wildfire-risk mitigation; Forest owner typologies; Family forest owners; Risk-perception; Socioeconomic management-logics; Plantation forestry
• ISSN: 1873-7617; 1873-7854
• DOI: 10.1007/s11842-021-09499-0

With the growing problem of wildfires, fuel reduction is recognized as a cost-effective way to protect forests and inhabitants. Understanding forest owners’ responses to wildfire-risk is therefore essential to trigger action in this regard. The main research on this response, which gives risk-perception a central role, is plagued by some inconsistent findings. Acknowledging recent developments in research, we develop and apply an innovative conceptual framework focused on the socioeconomic logics in forest management, in order to explain family forest owners’ response to wildfire-risk. By applying a cluster analysis to data collected from face-to-face surveys of a sample of Portuguese forest owners, we identified three management types—Loss minimizers, Risk mitigators under family labor availability, and Risk mitigators for forest profitability. These management types, which express decision-making frameworks with an enlarged timespan for risk-response identification, showed that, rather than minimizing wildfire-risk, owners seek to minimize economic risk. Depending on their management-logics this can be achieved either by mitigating or by not mitigating wildfire-risk. Even perceiving a high wildfire-risk in their forest, owners do not mitigate this risk when management is guided by the minimization of expenditures as a way to minimize economic losses. Conversely, even if they have a perception of low wildfire-risk, owners decide to mitigate the risk when forests are a substantial source of income or represent an important household asset. We therefore conclude that a consistent explanation for the wildfire risk-response must consider the diversity of the owners’ multi-objectives and their contexts.