Smoke on the horizon; leveling up citizen and social science to motivate health protective responses during wildfires

Climate change factors and expanded population growth in the Wildland Urban Interface (transition zone between human structures and undeveloped wildland) contribute to a projected increase in wildfire frequency and smoke exposure. As an unregulated source of air pollution, reducing smoke exposure represents a difficult challenge for health risk communicators. The target audience is broad with unpredictable health impacts due to spatial and temporal variability in exposure. Beyond providing information, agencies face challenges reaching affected populations, motivating behavior change, and overcoming barriers between intentions and actions (recommended health protection). The Smoke Sense citizen science project developed a smartphone app to provide an engagement, learning, and information-sharing platform. Here we draw upon previous trends in behavioral patterns and propose a synergistic approach of citizen and behavioral science that can be applied to increase understanding of health risk and motivate new habits to reduce exposure among impacted individuals. Presentation of the approach proceeds as follows: (1) we identify several core factors that contribute to an intention-action gap, (2) identify applicable social and behavioral science principles that can bridge the gap, (3) propose explicit examples focused on theoretical principles, (4) describe small-scale user preliminary feedback and examples for monitoring and evaluating impact, and (5) provide a look to the future for collaborative citizen engagement. Current health risk communication strategies often lack consideration of behavioral factors that may enhance motivation and encourage behavior change. The proposed approach aims to leverage the strengths of citizen and social science and seeks to encourage a focused ‘digital community’ to implement new habits in the face of unpredictable and dynamic environmental threats.

Impact/Purpose

Increased particulate matter pollution, especially related to wildfire smoke exposure, has been linked to a broad range of health outcomes including higher rates of cardiorespiratory emergency visits, hospitalizations, and even death (Adetona et al., 2016; Black et al., 2017; Dennekamp and Abramson, 2011; Dodd et al., 2018; Haikerwal et al., 2015; Liu et al., 2015; Morgan et al., 2010; Rappold et al., 2011; Reid et al., 2016; Wettstein et al., 2018), kidney (Wyatt et al., 2020) and cognitive (Cleland et al., 2022) impacts. As the risks from large wildfires grow on the landscape with hotter and drier climate conditions, a directly related public health danger looms on the horizon in the form of greater and more frequent wildfire smoke exposure. Smoke exposure extends well beyond fire perimeters and jurisdictional boundaries and results in billions of dollars in health burden (Fann et al., 2018; Jones, 2017; Kochi et al., 2010). Current approaches to mitigation of wildfire smoke health risks are projected to have ‘modest and unequal benefits’ (Burke et al. 2022). Wildfire smoke exposure has a range of impacts; from those that seem minor or nuisances such as upper respiratory, ear-nose-throat symptoms, or scratchy eyes to headaches, depression, anxiety, and impaired sleep to the most extreme outcomes previously described. The heterogeneity of effects on just respiratory health alone makes it difficult to characterize demographic subgroups that are more susceptible to adverse outcomes (Kondo et al., 2019). Simply stated, no one in the vicinity of a fire; young or old, healthy or in poor health, can completely escape the ramifications of smoke exposure including an increasing public health burden.

Citation

Prince, S., S. Muskin, S. Kramer, S. Huang, T. Blakey, AND A. Rappold. Smoke on the horizon; leveling up citizen and social science to motivate health protective responses during wildfires. Springer Nature, LONDON, UK, 11:253, (2024). [DOI: 10.1057/s41599-024-02641-1]

DOI: Smoke on the horizon; leveling up citizen and social science to motivate health protective responses during wildfires