Assessing policy preferences for preventing and managing wildfire in Greece

Abstract

Extreme temperatures and droughts have led to catastrophic wildfires across Greece over the last two decades, with 2023 experiencing the largest fire-driven evacuation in the country's history. Existing wildfire governance approaches may be outdated in the face of these new challenges. Greek residents' attitudes and willingness to pay for additional prevention and mitigation may be changing with the increased threat. Because policy design can affect public support and subsequent outcomes, we conducted an online national-level survey of Greek residents (n = 722) with an embedded discrete choice experiment, aimed at assessing preferences and willingness-to-pay for different policy alternatives to address wildfire risk. Our results suggest that, in general, Greek residents are unsatisfied with current fire policy, are willing to pay a small amount for additional fire mitigation efforts aimed to reduce burned areas, and prefer action led by the Greek Forest or Fire Services using awareness and education campaign—for example, fire prevention informative mailers or workshops.