The USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station recently featured WiRē’s work in a Science Spotlight: Do actions speak louder than words? How risk aversion affects objective and self-reported wildfire mitigation measures. The article highlighted our recent Champ et al. (2020) paper in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, where we found that risk averse individuals had higher levels of mitigation compared to risk neutral and risk-taking individuals. That result held for both self-reported mitigation and the assessments by the wildfire professional.
