Changing wildfire regimes coupled with budget cuts are spurring increased involvement of communities and citizens in fire management programs. Policy making faces the task of understanding citizens’ willingness to participate and mobilizing will into actions. As there is no reason to expect that the same factors affect willingness to participate and actual participation in the same direction, policy making would require information both on citizens’ preferences over management programs and on drivers and barriers to participation. In this paper we compare data on preferences from a Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) with data on adoption of fire prevention and mitigation measures. The objective is to test if the same factors explain actual participation and willingness to participate in fire management programs. Results suggest that sufficient information for policy design cannot be gained exclusively from the DCE or the analysis of actual behavioural data as the sets of explanatory factors do not entirely overlap. However, two variables – knowledge of fire regulations and community’s capacity – can be used to influence both the adoption of prevention and mitigation measures and citizens’ willingness to participate in fire management. Policy makers can directly control these factors to nudge the public towards greater involvement in fire prevention and mitigation.