Are we underestimating the economic costs of wildfire smoke? Aninvestigation using the life satisfaction approach

Understanding the economic costs imposed by wildfire smoke is important to evaluating competing firemanagement approaches and setting appropriate mitigation budgets. The nascent literature on wildfiresmoke costs has largely examined the indirect health costs associated with individuals’ exposure tosmoke. However, this ignores the direct costs of wildfire smoke, that is, the costs that smoke creates bydirectly affecting an individual’s utility. Direct costs may arise from smoke-induced changes in visibilityof scenic amenities or disruptions to ecosystem services that individuals see value in preserving. For thefirst time, the life satisfaction approach is applied to estimate wildfire smoke economic costs faced byindividuals from direct and indirect sources. Using nationally-representative data from the US BehavioralRisk Factor Surveillance System over 2006–2010, results suggest that US adults are willing to pay $373[95% CI: $86.8, $659.2] to avoid one day of wildfire smoke over their county of residence within a sixmonth period. Residents of rural areas are willing to pay $130 more to avoid one smoke day than urbanresidents. These results are higher than extant willingness to pay estimates of indirect smoke-inducedhealth impacts, suggestive that the true costs of wildfire smoke are larger than previously estimated.