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In the northern Great Plains of North America, Kentucky bluegrass has become a conservation concern on many remaining rangelands. Reintroduction of fire may be one of the best ways to combat bluegrass invasion in the northern Great Plains, but perceptions of risk and other societal constraints currently limit its use. We mailed a self-administered questionnaire to 460 landowners in North Dakota to identify landowner attitudes and perceptions toward prescribed fire and understand major factors that limit the use of fire in rangeland management of this area. We draw from the theory of planned behavior and the transtheoretical model of behavior change, two widely used behavioral models, to better understand differences in motivations between ranchers and nonranchers and then formulate engagement actions conducive to a change in fire application behavior. Our results indicate that 55% of nonranchers and 38% of ranchers saw prescribed fire as a beneficial tool, with 25% of nonranchers and 9% of ranchers having performed a prescribed fire on their land. We therefore deduced these two groups were in different behavioral stages. Increasing understanding of the benefits of prescribed fire to forage quality and increasing overall acceptance of fire in North Dakota may be effective for ranchers, whereas approaches that address the lack of labor and equipment would be more applicable to nonranchers. Results also show that once respondents have decided to include the periodic use of prescribed fire as part of their management plans, there is a strong likelihood that they will perform a prescribed fire. On the basis of these findings, we propose that focusing on sociological factors influencing behavior of landowners can inform targeted strategies for increasing prescribed fire perceptions and application in the study area. © 2019 The Society for Range Management