Abstract
BACKGROUND AND AIM: Risk perception plays an important role in developing response actions to wildfires and can be influenced by a variety of factors. We aimed to conduct a systematic review to compile a comprehensive list of factors that affect the public’s wildfire risk perception. METHOD: We performed an online search for PubMed, ProQuest, and Web of Science databases to identify research published between January 2000 and August 2022. Studies reporting factors related to risk perception based on surveys were included in the review. RESULTS: From 3,466 papers retrieved, 20 studies met our screening criteria, and 16 were conducted in the United States. Several major factors were identified as influential factors for the risk perception of wildfires: sociodemographic characteristics, property ownership, living environment, prior wildfire-related experience, and wildfire-related information resources. The most common factors studied were age, income, education, dense vegetation around the residence, and prior wildfire experience. The associations of age and prior experience with wildfire risk perception were largely inconsistent across papers, with some papers associating older age and having prior wildfire experience with lower risk perception, while others concluded the opposite or no association at all. Other factors, such as owning a property and being able to receive wildfire-related information from different resources were associated with higher risk perception in most of the studies. CONCLUSIONS: To our knowledge, this is the first review to summarize associations of factors with wildfire-related risk perception. Future studies can provide further investigations and theories to explain inconsistent results for certain variables.