Prescribed Fire in a Florida Landscape with Mixed Ownership: Spatial Interactions

Across the U.S., wildfires have become increasingly destructive and costly over the past few decades, with impacts particularly severe in the State of Florida. Because of an increase in wildfire frequency and severity and the number of people living in fire-prone areas the issue of wildfire risk management is of growing significance. One of the most important wildfire risk reduction tools is prescribed fire to reduce fuel loads, thereby reducing wildfire intensity and resulting damages. Because fire moves across a landscape and ownership boundaries, the spatial pattern of fuel load reduction may influence individual landowners' decisions about fire risk management on their own property. We develop and empirically test a spatial econometric model to study the interaction between Florida landowners in their wildfire risk management decisions.