Predicting homeowners' approval of fuel management at the wildland-urban interface using the theory of reasoned action

Social science models are increasingly needed as a framework for explaining and predicting how members of the public respond to the natural environment and their communities. The theory of reasoned action is widely used in human dimensions research on natural resource problems and work is ongoing to increase the predictive power of models based on this theory. This study examined beliefs, attitudes, and intention to support the implementation of three fuel management approaches (FMA)-prescribed burning, mechanical fuel reduction, and defensible space ordinances-in three wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas in the United States. Besides factors prescribed by the theory, the influence of three additional explanatory variables was assessed: Past experience, personal importance, and trust. Personal importance of a FMA was a consistently significant predictor of attitude toward that approach, and trust in an agency's implementation of that approach was also a predictor of intention to approve the use of that approach.