Discourses About Wildfire in New Jersey and New South Wales: Q Method Results
- Summary statistics (.pdf format) -- includes a full list of statements, factor arrays, and factor loadings.
Discourses in New Jersey
Normative ("should") discourses
There were five basic normative discourses in New Jersey.
Discourse A: Responsible Managers
Responsible Managers aim at a traditional division of labor between the fire service and residents. Residents are expected to be responsible with ignition sources and keep their own homes in order, while the fire service provides education and carries out the work of fighting fires.
Discourse B: Community Planners
Community Planners focus on planning for fire control. Their first priority is for fire management to be scientific, and second for it to involve residents as well as professionals. They take a generally manipulative attitude toward the environment.
Discourse C: Populists
Populists' main concern is preserving the community's discretion and involvement against the use of fire danger as an excuse for government meddling. They oppose top-down fire management. They also show concern for the environment.
Discourse D: Accountable Citizens
Accountable Citizens see a need for strong action and sacrifices by both residents and officials to deal with elevated risks. They are relatively unconcerned with environmental impacts, emphasizing instead the control and widespread yet careful use of fire.
Discourse E: Scientific Environmentalists
Scientific Environmentalists prioritize policies that would protect the environment (although they also highly value human life). They favor a more natural fire regime. In their view, scientific expertise is central to establishing a good fire policy.
Descriptive ("is") discourses
There were also five basic discourses about what the status quo is actually like in New Jersey.
Discourse V: Responsible Managers
This discourse takes the same name as one of the normative discourses because its view of the status quo strongly resembles the ideal proposed by normative Responsible Managers -- and indeed, many sorters adhered to both of those discourses. In this view, fire management is successfully taken care of by the responsible agencies, while residents do their part to help out.
Discourse W: Skeptical Neighbors
Skeptical Neighbors feel that the risks of fire remain
high despite strong action by firefighters. They see irresponsible individualistic
action as leading to a failure to protect life, property, or the environment.
Discourse X: Safe Skeptics
Safe Skeptics are optimistic about the success of current fire policy in protecting human life, but they place the responsibility for this success at the local level. To them, the fire service is unreliable, politicized, and underfunded. However, fires are kept well under control.
Discourse Y: Unsuccessful Managers
Unsuccessful Managers also see the fire service as unreliable. In their case, however, this is linked to a pessimistic view of how safe people will be from fire.
Discourse Z: Irresponsibility Regulators
Like Alienated Neighbors, Irresponsibility Regulators see fire policy as falling short, and individualistic action as rampant. On the other hand, they believe that some policies are in place to try to deal with the problem.
Discourses in New South Wales
Normative ("should") discourses
There are four basic discourses in New South Wales.
Discourse F: Traditionalists
For Traditionalists, fire safety is an enforced responsibility of residents. People living in fire-prone areas are expected to do their part to make their own homes fire-safe. The law, however, will step in and enforce this responsibility. Traditionalists reject the idea that individuals should have discretion to make their own choices about fire, or even to participate in decision making. For them, human safety trumps protection of property or the environment.
Discourse G: Responsible Residents
Responsible Residents also focus on concrete fire safety actions that residents can take. However, the role of the fire service and the law are placed in the background -- instead, they want residents to be well-informed, and they are less hostile than other discourses to individuals making their own fire safety decisions. Responsible Residents favor protecting both human life and the environment. They also stress the role of using controlled burning in fire management.
Discourse H: Expert Authorities
Expert Authorities see the role of official planning as central. In their view, the Rural Fire Service and other authorities should take charge. All decision-making should be science-based and apolitical. Laypeople are not entirely trusted to follow fire safety practices, but Expert Authorities hold out hope for the effectiveness of education.
Discourse I: Green Democrats
Green Democrats also take a planning-centered view, but with a more bottom-up orientation. They stress the need to involve all stakeholders in fire decision making, while also having a strong scientific basis for policy. Their perspective is communitarian, not libertarian. Green Democrats also emphasize the need to protect the environment.
Descriptive ("is") discourses
Four descriptive discourses are present in New South Wales.
Discourse R: Official Managers
Official Managers of this discourse think that risk is present, but is well-managed by the actions of the authorities. They highlighted statements about the role of the Rural Fire Service in fighting fires and of laws in enforcing fire safe practices. Their confidence in ordinary residents is somewhat lower. Overall, Official Managers are optimistic about the effectiveness of current fire policy.
Discourse S: Risky Residents
Risky Residents put the role of the public in the foreground. They see residents as highly involved in fire planning as well as making individualistic decisions about their own practices, though there are laws in place. Fire management is hampered by politicization and bureaucratic barriers. Risky Residents thus think that overall, fire policy is not as successful as it could be.
Discourse T: Equal-Opportunity Skeptics
Equal-Opportunity Skeptics take the most pessimistic view of current fire policy. They see irresponsible individualistic action by residents as central. Effective fire safety laws and strong management by the RFS are also nowhere to be seen.
Discourse U: Cooperative Citizens
Cooperative Citizens think that current fire management is relatively successful. They highlight the importance of official policy that enforces fire safety. At the same time, they believe that residents are in compliance with the practices that policy requires of them.
Conclusions
Some of the same themes appear in both New Jersey and New South Wales, but the set of discourses present in each location differs. Both locations had people who focused on what residents could do (Responsible Managers, Accountable Citizens, Traditionalists, and Responsible Residents), and some people who prioritized having a good planning process (Community Planners, Populists, Scientific Environmentalists, Expert Authorities, and Green Democrats). In New Jersey, a secondary disagreement focused on whether fire should be used to pursue multiple goals (Populists and Scientific Environmentalists) or kept carefully under control (Community Planners and Accountable Citizens). In New South Wales, there was disagreement about whether fire management should be top-down (Traditionalists and Expert Authorities) or bottom-up (Responsible Residents and Green Democrats).
In the normative discourses, there was also disagreement about the relative importance of protecting life, property, and the environment. This disagreement about priorities cut across the divisions described in the previous paragraph. Some discourses had a "balanced" view, wanting to protect all three values equally (Responsible Managers and Libertarians). Others are "environmentalists," thinking that human life and the environment should take precedence over property (Scientific Environmentalists, Responsible Residents, and Green Democrats). Finally, some are "safety first," aiming at protecting human life while making property and the environment secondary (Community Planners, Accountable Citizens, Traditionalists, and Expert Authorities).
In the descriptive discourses, there are two main themes. On the one hand we have optimists, who feel that fire policy is successful because of the leading role taken by the fire service (Responsible Managers, Safe Skeptics, Official Managers, and Cooperative Citizens). On the other hand are pessimists, who blame individualistic homeowners and an inefficient and politicized fire management system (Skeptical Neighbors, Unsuccessful Managers, Irresponsibility Regulators, Risky Residents, and Equal-Opportunity Skeptics).
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.