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Research from CU Boulder environmental economist Grant Webster finds that wildfire risk mitigation and proactive evacuation preparation are complementary

The 2025 Los Angeles fires, the 2023 Lahaina Fire in Hawaii and the 2018 Camp Fire in northern California were rapid-moving wildfires that resulted in 196 combined fatalities, tens of thousands of displaced residents and billions of dollars in property damage.

Emergency preparedness experts have long recognized that wildfire risk mitigation and proactive evacuation efforts can both play important roles in lessening the risk of danger to people and property. And yet, previous research focused on those two efforts independently of one another, says��, an environmental economist and postdoctoral research associate with the�� at the �Թ��� of Colorado Boulder.

Seeking to bridge that gap, Webster and his fellow researchers at the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Geological Survey analyzed household survey data from the Wildfire Research Center (WiRē) collected in 25 wildland-urban interface (WUI) communities across five Western states, specifically examining both mitigation and preparedness measures.

Grant Webster, a postdoctoral research associate with the Institute of Behavioral Science and CU Boulder PhD graduate in economics, and his research colleagues find that wildfire risk mitigation and proactive evacuation preparation are complementary.

“Our interest was looking at whether there’s a relationship between them. Is there a trade-off, like some people deciding, ‘I’m really prepared to evacuate but I’m not going to mitigate my home,’ or vice versa?” he says.

After evaluating their findings, Webster and his co-authors determined that those two strategies are not competing priorities but instead are mutually reinforcing behaviors. They explain their conclusion in a recently published paper in��,

“When people think about their risk and take action in one area, they are more likely to take action in the other,” he explains. “There’s a spillover between the two.”

Webster says this means that a homeowner who takes proactive mitigation measures—such as trimming the vegetation around their home, clearing the area of combustibles (such as chopped wood) and upgrading building materials to make their home more fire resistant—are statistically more likely to plan safe evacuation routes, prepare “to-go” bags, identify where the household will evacuate to and talk with neighbors about evacuation strategies.

The finding also holds in reverse: Households that take no action in one area often take no action in the other.

“That’s the troubling part,” Webster says. “People living in the riskiest properties are often the least prepared to evacuate.”

Why would a household neither mitigate nor prepare to evacuate?

Webster says his study controls for factors such as income, risk perception and information sources. None of these fully explains the gap.

“It’s likely something unobserved, potentially simply not thinking about wildfire risk,” he says. “If people aren’t engaged with the issue—if they haven’t talked with neighbors or professionals, or if they haven’t experienced a fire—they’re less likely to do either mitigation or evacuation planning.”

Experience is a powerful motivator

The study also examined which households were most likely to have evacuation plans in place. Webster says three patterns emerged. First, people who have evacuated before—or who have lived through a close call—are significantly more likely to prepare. Second, households that understand their vulnerability tend to be more proactive. And third, conversations with neighbors or wildlife professionals can prompt homeowners to act.

“Talking with others gets people thinking,” Webster says. Whether it’s a community meeting or a casual conversation about defensible space, social interaction increases preparedness, he adds.

Interestingly, income was not associated with evacuation planning. Webster says the research found wealthier households were no more likely to have evacuation plans than middle class or lower-income households.

While the study found that all mitigation actions correlate with evacuation preparedness, Webster says a few stood out more strongly: clearing vegetation, replacing combustible siding and addressing attached combustibles, such as wooden decks.

CU Boulder researcher Grant Webster found that income is not associated with wildfire evacuation planning; wealthier households are no more likely to have evacuation plans than middle class or lower-income households. (Photo of 2023 Lahaina Fire: Wikimedia Commons)

Still, he cautions against viewing any single action as the “gateway” to preparedness.

“It’s not that there’s one magic measure that will make someone start planning,” he says. “It’s the overall process of thinking about risk and engaging with mitigation that appears to encourage evacuation preparedness.”

So, does that mean mitigation always naturally leads to evacuation preparedness, or does the evacuation preparedness sometimes lead to mitigation efforts? Webster says the question is a bit like the one posed as to which comes first: the chicken or the egg?

“In the paper, with our data, we look only at the direction of mitigation leading to evacuation preparedness. We can’t say anything causal the other way. Hazard literature suggests mitigation usually comes before preparedness, but in practice it could go either way,” he says. “We’re not saying it always does; we just estimate the causal effect in that direction.”

It’s also difficult to interpret from the study how large an impact risk mitigation has on evacuation preparedness for households, Webster says.

“For example, the results suggest that if a household were to change the distance to close vegetation around their home from 5 to 30 feet to over 100 feet, this would result in a household completing one more evacuation preparation action,” he says. “Although certain mitigation and evacuation actions require different levels of effort, making it difficult to quantify a typical effect.”

Implications for authorities and community organizations

Because the study reveals strong spillover effects, Webster says it offers validation for wildfire programs that address mitigation and evacuation together.

“There are teams out there talking to residents about both defensible space and evacuation plans,” he says. “Our findings show that is a good approach.”

Equally important, Webster says, is that even programs that focus on just one area—such as mitigation—are not crowding out the other.

“If you’re spending resources talking about evacuation preparedness, you’re not making people less likely to mitigate,” he explains. “And if you’re talking about mitigation, you’re not reducing the likelihood that they’ll plan for evacuation. People can—and do—take both actions.”

Webster emphasizes that the paper is written primarily for practitioners—fire departments, emergency managers and local governments—that need evidence-based guidance when designing public education programs. Webster’s research is designed to give those practitioners a road map to:

• Pair mitigation messaging with evacuation preparedness, as they reinforce each other and improve overall community resilience.
• Target outreach to households with no experience or engagement, as they are the most likely to be unprepared in both areas.
• Encourage neighbor-to-neighbor conversations, as social networks are powerful tools for spreading risk awareness.
• Recognize that income is not a predictor. Preparedness campaigns should include all demographics equally.

“Once we collect and aggregate the data and provide it to the practitioners—those people working on the ground—they can better inform their programs and their policies to deal with the risks in their specific community,” he says. For many at-risk communities, especially rural ones, budgets and personnel are limited, so practical advice that can be easily shared is especially valuable, he adds.

More fires, more need for research

For Webster, this research is particularly timely.

“Wildfire risk is definitely increasing throughout the country and around the world, due to a variety of factors, including climate change,” he says. “With these fast-moving fires, like in California, it’s really important for people to be ready to evacuate quickly and also to mitigate their home so it’s less likely to be destroyed.”

In addition to the danger of increasing temperatures associated with climate change, Webster says there are two other primary wildfire risk factors: the historical suppression of fires, which has resulted in an accumulation of fuels at risk of catching fire, and the expansion of communities into fire-prone areas, putting more people and properties at risk.

Meanwhile, Webster says he sees the potential for scholars to produce more research on this topic as new data becomes available.

“Our dataset is always growing,” he says. “That allows us to replicate earlier studies on a larger scale and understand the changing dynamics of preparedness.”

He says further research may explore how specific education strategies influence behavior, or how emerging technologies (such as real-time risk maps or AI-driven alerts) shape community responses.

For now, Webster says one message is clear: Proactive steps matter—and households that take action in one area are likely to take action in another. As Webster puts it, “Improving engagement—getting people to think about their wildfire risk—is one of the most powerful tools we have.”

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