Event Date
Keith Chen, UCLA "Behavioral Responses to Wildfire Smoke: Insights from Smartphone Location Data" (with Clara Berestycki)
Download paper here.
Abstract: Although wildfire smoke is a major public health concern, relatively
little is known about individual avoidance behavior. In this paper,
we use smartphone-location data to study behavioral responses
to smoke during the 2018 California wildfire season, one of the
deadliest in recent US history (1). Using individual-level data, we
construct daily measures of when and where California residents
spend their time. We find that high levels of smoke increase time
spent at home and indoors, while decreasing mobility and time
at work. However, we find adaptation starts at relatively high
levels of smoke—significantly higher than when smoke becomes
dangerous—suggesting a gap between the levels of smoke that
trigger adaptation and those that are harmful to human health.
While we observe broad-based responses across most demographics,
we find much stronger responses among high-SES residents, driven
primarily by differences in education rather than income or other
characteristics. We compare responses to smoke to those of rainfall,
another disamenity to time outside whose costs are more obvious
and immediate. While time at home and indoors increases with rain,
these responses do not display the same socioeconomic gradient
as smoke. Taken together, our results suggest that differential
responses by education are unlikely to reflect differences in ability to
adjust time and activities. Instead, they likely arise from differences
in awareness of the health risks associated with wildfire smoke
exposure.