Discourses About Wildfire in New Jersey and New South Wales: Conclusions
Overall Conclusions
Note that analysis of the New Jersey survey is not yet complete and is therefore not incorporated into this discussion.
Overall evaluation of Grid-Group Cultural Theory:
Grid-Group Cultural Theory provides a poor explanation for people's views of wildfire. None of the Q-based discourses strongly resembled any of the Grid-Group worldviews, despite the use of Grid-Group Cultural Theory as a frame for selecting statements. Thus, using Grid-Group Cultural Theory to ensure consideration of all viewpoints would lead to overlooking important sites of disagreement.
The surveys also found little support for Grid-Group Cultural Theory. While some correlations were present between GGCT worldview scales and questions relating to household social structure, and between these two sets of questions and questions about views and practices relating to wildfires, the correlations were weak and the overall pattern of correlations was not what would be predicted by GGCT.
The detachment hypothesis helps to explain why Grid-Group Cultural Theory -- which was developed, and has been used successfully, in the context of highly politicized risks like nuclear power -- would have less purchase with respect to an issue like fire that is more peripheral to most people's identity and way of life. In the Q sorts, while individuals were successful in structuring clear viewpoints, the Q exercise was not integrated into their way of life and hence was not strongly shaped by the institutional/structural imperatives that Grid-Group Cultural Theory hypothesizes to control risk perception.
Challenges for participatory fire management:
There was support in some sectors of the public in New Jersey and New South Wales for a participatory approach to fire management (e.g. NSW's Green Democrats discourse, which was favored by about a quarter of the survey respondents). However, two significant aspects of public thinking about wildfires will make it difficult to engage the public through popular deliberative democracy approaches:
1)Deference to authority. Majorities in both case study areas conceptualized fire management as the job of the authorities, particularly the Rural Fire Service in NSW and the Forest Fire Service and local fire departments in NJ. Views of the fire services, even among individuals with more democratic preferences, were generally very positive with respect to the fire service's expertise and trustworthiness.
2)Detachment. As described above in my discussion of the detachment hypothesis, wildfire is not an especially salient issue for most people in the case study areas. While people may recognize the wisdom of fire planning, their motivation to spend time, resources, and effort on getting involved is limited, and fire is easily swamped by other concerns.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all of the organizations and individuals who participated in this research.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0526381. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.