Social science models are increasingly needed as a framework for explaining and

Wildland-urban interface (WUI) residents in Michigan were interviewed using a contingent valuation protocol to assess their willingness-to-pay (WTP) for incremental reductions in the risk of losing their homes to wild-fire. WTP was elicited using a probability model which segments the risk of structure loss into “public” and “private” components. Most respondents expressed positive WTP for publicly funded risk reduction activities. These respondents were characterized by tolerance for property taxes, perception of significant risk, high ranking of fire risk relative to other hazards, and high objective estimates of existing risk, and their WTP amounts were positively correlated with income and property value. Given that 97% of the respondents were insured against property loss, the large number of positive WTP responses suggests that substantial non-market and unreimbursed losses are experienced when structures are destroyed by wildfires.

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Many entrepreneurs enter long-term relationships such as franchising, an important area of entrepreneurship research. However, franchising is but one version of an underlying organizational form-long-term share relationships-in which both principals and agents receive variable returns. Using two major streams of research that have long remained largely separate from one another-franchising and sharecropping-we build an integrative model of the determinants of share relationships, apply an evolutionary perspective to show how incentives may change, develop explanations for longstanding theoretical conflicts, and generate a fresh set of research propositions.résUMé. Un bon nombre d'entrepreneurs entrent dans des relations d'affaires à long terme tel que le franchisage, un important domaine de la recherche en entrepreneuriat. Par contre, le franchisage n'est qu'une version d'une forme organisationnelle sous-jacente, soit les relations de partage à long terme dans lesquelles les partenaires de cette relation, les franchiseurs et les franchisés, ont des rendements qui varient. c'est à l'aide de deux volets de recherche, le franchisage et le métayage, lesquels sont longtemps demeurés séparés, que les auteurs ont développé un modèle d'intégration des déterminants des relations de partage, appliqué une perspective évolutionnaire pour montrer la façon dont les motivations peuvent évoluer, élaboré des explications quant à des conflits théoriques de longue date, et élaboré de nouvelles hypothèses de recherche.

The ongoing expansion of human populations into wildland areas dominated by flammable vegetation, and the concomitant increased frequency of uncontrolled wildfires that result in losses of property and human lives, has raised new questions about the optimal level of fire protection. The morphing of the problem conception from minimizing costs plus losses of natural resources to responding to the concerns of people whose homes are at risk has stimulated fire protection planners to account for potential changes in people's well-being beyond what is reflected by insured value. Knowing the perceived value of an increase in collective (agency-provided) fire protection that achieves a risk reduction target can contribute much to policy debates on the restructuring and funding of fire protection infrastructure and fuel management. To evaluate the utility of contingent valuation for assessing such risk reduction value, the value of collective fire protection at the wildland-urban interface was assessed for residents of a Michigan jack pine forest. Seventy-five percent of the 265 residents interviewed chose to participate in a hypothetical market for a 50% reduction in risk and, on average, were willing to pay over $57 a year for such risk reduction. Results were consistent with a two-stage decision model: (1) participation in the hypothetical market for risk reduction, and (2) how much the risk reduction is worth. Homeowner risk perception and objectively assessed risk both influenced the probability of market participation. For market participants, willingness to pay was related to property value and household income, suggesting that value at risk and ability to pay weigh heavily in this decision. FOR. SCI. 47(3):349–360.