Scale development of wildfire management basic beliefs

Understanding how the public feels about fire management issues has become a priority for many natural resource agencies. Based on work on wildlife basic beliefs, we developed scales for measuring basic beliefs about wildfire management. Identification of basic beliefs about wildfire management helps agencies predict public attitudes toward fire policies, norms for agency reactions to wildfire, and fire-related behavior (e.g., creating defensible space). Results supported the existence of wildfire management basic belief dimensions, opening the way for additional research in their development.