Assessing the impact of wildfires on property values in wildland-urban intermix and interface in Colorado: A hedonic approach

In this article, we investigate the impact of wildfire on property values in wildland-urban intermix (WUIM) and wildland-urban interface (WUIF) in Colorado. We construct fire indices accounting for the nonlinear impact of wildfires, and evaluate the effects of different fire attributes—proximity, frequency, and scale—on property values in a hedonic price framework using housing transactions data and wildfire data in Colorado from 2000 to 2016. We find a substantial difference in the impact of wildfires on property values between WUIM and WUIF. Specifically, larger fires depreciate property values in WUIM, but increase property values in WUIF. In addition, we find that small fires lead to a negative impact on property values in both WUIM and WUIF, which is comparable with larger fires. Our findings provide policymakers novel information in making more efficient wildfire management plans.