Interviews with Northern California residents reveal that social norms and social support are essential to understanding health protective behaviors during wildfire smoke events, information that could be leveraged to improve public health outcomes.
By Danielle Torrent Tucker
As wildfires become common in the western US and around the world, checking the daily air quality advisory has become as routine as checking the weather. But what people do with that data, whether it leads them to put on a mask before going out or to seal their homes against smoke, is not always straightforward or rational, according to new research from Stanford.
In a case study of Northern California residents, Stanford researchers explored the psychological factors and social processes that drive responses to wildfire smoke. The research, which ultimately aims to discover approaches to help people better protect themselves, shows that social norms and social support are essential to understanding health protection actions during wildfire smoke events. The findings appeared this month in the journal. Climate risk management.
"It is important to understand how people behave so that public health communications professionals can potentially intervene and promote safer behavior that mitigates risk," said study lead author Francisca Santana, a doctoral student at the Program. Emmett Interdisciplinary in Environment and Resources (E-IPER). . โThis kind of qualitative work is a first step for us to learn how people use information and interact to make decisions. Then we can see where there might be leverage points or opportunities to promote more protective behavior. "
Exposure to wildfire smoke can irritate the lungs, cause inflammation, affect the immune system and increase susceptibility to lung infections, including the virus that causes COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While other studies have examined how people respond to evacuation orders, little has been done to understand what is happening to exposure to wildfire smoke if people cannot, or cannot, leave the area, depending on the lead author of the study. Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, assistant professor of earth system science at Stanford's Faculty of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences (Stanford Land).
"It resonated with me, the things that people were doing to try to protect themselves in the absence of access to effective ways to reduce their exposure to wildfire smoke," Wong-Parodi said, referring to a resident who breathed into through a handkerchief soaked in a Try to filter out toxic smoke particles. "It is urgent that we come up with strategies that are realistic for what people are going through."
Study authors Santana and David Gonzรกlez, who worked on the study as a Ph.D. student at Stanford, interviewed residents of all ages, races, and demographics who were affected by smoke from the 2018 Camp Fire wildfires that destroyed Paradise, California, and subsequent fires in 2019 in Fresno, Santa Clara, and Sacramento counties.
They found that people responded to wildfire smoke events in three main ways: interpreting information together, protecting other vulnerable, and questioning protective actions. Their responses were influenced not only by the Air Quality Index (AQI) but also by what they were personally experiencing, whether they smelled, saw, or tasted smoke in the air.
Just as important were the social factors at play, the researchers found. "Social norms and social support were really influencing how people chose to act based on their perceptions of threat," Santana said. "For example, many people spoke of observing others with masks and, in some cases, that observation was enough for them to act using a mask."
Their discussions revealed that the rules or standards of behavior shared within a social group, social norms, were a common path that encouraged behavior change, in addition to the act of helping or comforting others within their social group, social support .
โThere were only a handful of people who described looking at the AQI and then changing their behavior based on that alone; it was almost always a conversation they had between them, โSantana said. "It was very much a social exercise in making sense of limited information or information that was not on the right scale for their community."
The study provides a framework to better understand responses to wildfire smoke by examining social processes while recognizing that cultural and political contexts, as well as factors such as demographics, health status, and previous smoke exposure and air pollution can also influence individual behaviors.
In the western US, climate change has contributed to the risk and spread of wildfires, bringing smoke to regions like the Bay Area, which have historically been less affected than the rest of the state. In some cases, the researchers found that residents were unable to protect themselves because they could not access N95 masks or air purifiers or properly seal their homes.
"This research is also important to epidemiologists trying to understand how wildfire smoke affects health," said Gonzalez, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. "This can help us analyze the disparities in who is exposed to smoke and whether that leads to worse health for some populations."
As these events become more common, there could be an opportunity to find policy synergies that help prepare communities for future smoke events, according to the co-authors. For example, programs that are designed to improve home comfort and increase energy efficiency could also include measures to reduce smoke intrusion during wildfire smoke events, Wong-Parodi suggested.
Some of the interviews revealed that residents simply did not know what to do while experiencing a novel extreme event. But even that revealed how processing uncertainty is a social exercise, not just a cognitive one.
"This article shows that social norms can be an effective lever to encourage the pro-health change we would like to see," said Wong-Parodi. "That is actually a really promising sign to think about how to adapt and mitigate our risk as we face increasing threats from climate change."
Wong-Parodi is also a central fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Stanford Research Coordinator Stephanie Fischer, BS, BA '19, and Earth Systems Master's student Jessica Mi helped conduct interviews for the study.
