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Rapp Final Dissertation.pdf (3.86 MB)

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An Analysis of the Social and Technological Factors Influencing Team Performance in Wildland Fire Incident Management Teams

Rapp, Claire
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1579-5208
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1650566023582009

Abstract Details

2022, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Environment and Natural Resources.
Wildfire is a difficult environmental hazard to manage. While uncontrolled wildfires can pose considerable risk, overly-aggressive suppression degrades fire-adapted ecosystems and increases the risk of catastrophic wildfires in the long run. The fire managers and incident management teams (IMTs) who manage fires must make decisions in rapidly evolving situations characterized by high risk. Many factors inform these decisions, and fire managers must choose how they will seek out and attend to information. Information may come from technological sources such as decision support tools, or social sources such as trustworthy supervisors and subordinates. IMT members have a suite of decision support tools available that provide information on a variety of attributes, such as values at risk, forecasted weather, and projected fire behavior. However, it is not clear how IMT members use things like weather information to inform their tactical decisions. In Chapter 1, we review the psychological dynamics of fire manager decision making and the social dynamics of wildland fire management teams that influence what information fire managers use, and how they use it. In Chapter 2, we use a choice experiment to evaluate how IMT members use forecasted precipitation, humidity, and wind when making tactical decisions. Results show IMT members actively use weather information and generally prefer to directly attack fires exhibiting moderate fire behavior and indirectly attack fires exhibiting extreme fire behavior. However, how much importance fire managers assign to weather information depends on the previous tactics being used up until that point. Based on these results, we recommend future efforts to improve reliability and confidence should target precipitation and wind models. We also recommend decision support tools, including weather forecast tools, be designed with the probable decision strategies of the end users in mind. We also evaluate how trust dynamics between team members influence team performance. In Chapter 3, we interview IMT members about the characteristics they look for in trustworthy supervisors and subordinates, and what they believe those team members look for in them. IMT members show consistency in trust referents: what they value in supervisors, they believe their subordinates value in them and vice versa. Ability, benevolence, integrity, predictability, and gender influence trustworthiness, but their relative importance depends on the trust referent. These results point to the need to interrogate whether the accepted symbols of competence used and accepted by fire managers accurately reflect the skills valued in teams. As well, results suggest several ways for team members, especially supervisors, to improve their trustworthiness. In Chapter 4, we survey IMT members to assess how trusting and being trusted by one’s supervisor influences overall team learning and team performance in IMTs. While trustworthy supervisors positively contribute to team performance mediated by team learning behavior, feeling trusted by supervisors was not statistically significant. These results reveal the important role supervisors play in overall team-functioning and highlights which trustworthiness characteristics are valued in supervisors. As well, results suggest trust and felt trust are conceptually similar, but not identical and future research should proceed with caution before using reflexively-worded trust scales to measure felt trust. Future work should evaluate the effect of not only the respondent-supervisor trust dyad, but the respondent-subordinate dyad as well. In Chapter 5, the presented work is summarized for a practitioner and policy audience in the form of three research briefs. These research briefs are structured in line with Lake States Fire Science Consortium Research Briefs guidelines. Briefs are 500 – 800 words, including an overview, methods, and combined results and implications section. They include a key figure or table to communicate findings and have 3 - 5 bulleted management implications.
Robyn Wilson (Advisor)
Matthew Hamilton (Committee Member)
Eric Toman (Committee Member)
223 p.
Behavioral Sciences; Environmental Management; Natural Resource Management; Psychology
wildfire; trust; felt trust; decision making; weather; incident management team

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Rapp, C. (2022). An Analysis of the Social and Technological Factors Influencing Team Performance in Wildland Fire Incident Management Teams [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1650566023582009

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Rapp, Claire. An Analysis of the Social and Technological Factors Influencing Team Performance in Wildland Fire Incident Management Teams. 2022. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1650566023582009.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Rapp, Claire. "An Analysis of the Social and Technological Factors Influencing Team Performance in Wildland Fire Incident Management Teams." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2022. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1650566023582009

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1650566023582009
134
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.