Outcome efficacy and responsibility as correlates of household wildfire adaptation action in Boulder, CO

Growing wildfire risks are increasing losses and damages to wildland-urban interface households in the American West. In Colorado, the December 2021 Marshall Fire destroyed over 1000 suburban homes and became the most destructive fire in the state's history and the 10th costliest in US history. Fortunately, homeowner adaptation action can play a significant role in preventing structural damage or loss that can come from a wildfire. Yet, action is more effective when coordinated across a community, since the nature of wildfire as a hazard means that one homeowner's wildfire risk is informed not only by their own actions but also those taken by their neighbors. Across the summer and fall of 2022, we distributed a household survey and conducted focus groups in the City of Boulder, which was near but not within the burn area of the Marshall Fire. Using multilevel regression analysis, we explored the role of social and cognitive factors in motivating both the number of adopted adaptation actions and the adoption of specific actions at the household scale. Our analysis points to the role of outcome efficacy and personal responsibility as correlates of homeowner adaptation action to wildfire. Our focus group data lend nuance and insight into our model results and highlight the role of extreme weather and perceptions of community inaction as drivers of low outcome efficacy beliefs and household inaction. Our findings point to the importance of collective action for wildfire as a tool to increase outcome efficacy perceptions and drive action at the household level.