Information, Trust and Confidence: A Framework to Understand Public Risk Perceptions After Wildfires in China

Abstract

Wildfires are increasingly frequent and intense due to climate change and human activities. Public risk perceptions after wildfires play a critical role in wildfire management, but there is a lack of specific studies in China. Based on theories such as risk perception, this paper constructs a theoretical model of wildfire risk perception, proposes an explanatory framework of information-trust-confidence, and uses principal component analysis (PCA) to analyze and measure the influencing factors of the subjective construction of perceived risk and the degree of influence of different factors. A study of 408 residents in Bijie, China was conducted to find out how information about fire conditions and economic losses, trust in the government, and confidence in coping with wildfires affect risk perception after a wildfire. The study found a negative correlation between information, trust, confidence, and risk perception.