When deciding to engage in an outdoor activity, recreationists often have a specific activity and setting in mind that they would like to participate in, like hiking or boating on a favorite trail or lake, respectively. When they set out for this experience but are unable to recreate in their desired way, they may leave feeling disappointed by the lack of engagement and misalignment between their experience and desired outcomes. To guide visitors to suitable alternative recreation experiences due to events such as extreme heat, wildfires, etc., a better understanding of displacement, information sources, perceived fire risk, and fire-related message fatigue is needed. The Los Padres, San Bernardino, Cleveland, and Angeles forests are four urban-proximate national forests in southern California. These forests are utilized by approximately 26 million people, to meet the local peoples’ recreation needs. This thesis builds from a multi-part project and is organized into four distinct chapters. My findings draw attention to the main drivers and types of displacement experienced by recreationists, the sources used by recreationists to find out forest related information, and the role of message fatigue regarding wildfire risk perception. By using quantitative methods, I aim to address four research questions: (1) What form(s) of displacement, if any, have users experienced, and with that, what are the main drivers and types? (2) How do these drivers and types of displacement vary by (a) multigenerational households and (b) motivations (Cultural Ecosystem Services) (3) How much, if at all, are southern California residents who recreate locally in national forests experiencing message fatigue regarding wildfire and wildfire risk events? and (4) Do levels of message fatigue relate to their decision-making processes and perceptions of risk? Chapter 1 provides a comprehensive literature review of this thesis and these questions. Chapter 2 addresses questions 1 and 2, while chapter 3 addresses questions 3 and 4. Chapter 4 summarizes contributions across the two main research questions and chapters.
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