Conference Agenda

Wildfire smoke is increasing recognized as a major channel through which wildfire impacts society. Despite this, there is limited knowledge on how households value smoke exposure, particularly across time, sources, and severity levels. Additionally, a preferred wildlife mitigation method, prescribed burning, also generates smoke which creates a trade-off between smoke today for (potentially) less smoke in the future. This study estimates household willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce smoke exposure from wildfire and prescribed fire, distinguishing between moderate and severe smoke days. We used a stated-preference discrete choice experiment to examine the WTP for reductions in smoke exposure and estimate the marginal rate of substitution between wildfire and prescribed fire smoke days.

We find a WTP of $10.2 [95% CI: $5.4, $14.9] per year to avoid one additional day of moderate wildfire smoke and $15.8 [95% CI: $4.3, $27.4] to avoid one day of severe wildfire smoke. We also find that the WTP to reduce exposure to prescribed fire smoke is substantially lower at $4.4 [95% CI: $1.9, $6.9]. Using the marginal rate of substitution between wildfire and prescribed fire smoke days, we find that households are willing to accept 2.9 prescribed fire smoke days to avoid one moderate wildfire smoke day, and 3.9 prescribed fire smoke days to avoid one severe wildfire smoke day. These results provide new preference-based evidence relevant for quantifying the cost of wildfire smoke and evaluation prescribed burning as a wildfire mitigation strategy.