Preprint: Unpacking previous experience: understanding how wildfire experiences shape risk perception and action

Previous experience with disasters is assumed to uniformly influence risk perceptions and the adoption of protective actions like mitigation and evacuation behaviour. Yet empirical evidence remains inconsistent, and the reason why is not well understood. As climate change intensifies the frequency and severity of disasters, at-risk communities are more likely to experience repeated disaster exposure over shorter time frames. Therefore, understanding how previous experience shapes risks perceptions and protective actions is critical to ensuring disaster resilience. Using a systematic review methodology, we identify studies (n=26) that explores the effect of previous experience of wildfires (bushfires) on risk perception and protective actions (from 2003-2024). We found that previous experience is not consistently conceptualised or operationalised; there are inconsistent findings for the relationship between previous experience and risk perceptions, yet there is greater, positive consistency in findings between previous experience and protective action. We propose there are three possible pathways that previous experience is influencing protective action: either directly, through a cognitive path (e.g., risk perceptions), or through a coping path (e.g., self-efficacy), which challenges existing models. We outline future research opportunities to improve field level understanding of previous experience of wildfires and its impact on risk perceptions and protective action.