Abstract: |
In past the fifteen years, many state laws regarding prescribed fire use in the United States have been adopted and revised, and many new statutes now explicitly recognize the benefits of prescribed fire for wildfire risk mitigation. From an economic perspective, the characteristics of liability law and regulation will affect the incentives for prescribed fire use and precaution. This article examines the effect of liability law and common regulations on the incidence and risk of escaped prescribed fire. The analysis is based on annual, state-level data from 1970 to 2002 from the National Interagency Fire Management Information Database in conjunction with a categorization of statutory law. Regression results show that the incidence and severity of escaped prescribed fires tends to be lower in states with more stringent statutory liability law and regulatory restrictions. These effects are strong for private landowners burning on private land, but weak or nonexistent for public employees on federal land. The regressions control for various factors that affect baseline risk and incentives for precaution, such as land values, population demographics, the overall incidence of wildfires, and other factors. It is important to recognize that even though more lenient or less restrictive laws may lead to higher incidence and severity of escape, leniency in the context of well designed law and regulation may be useful or even optimal from a societal perspective to facilitate important vegetation management objectives. |
