244 Schroeder et al.: Residents’ Attitudes Toward Street Trees falling debris and root damage while simultaneously increas- ing advantages gained from physical benefits such as slowing wind speed. The relative proximity of trees to North Somer- set/Torbay residences also would result in more shade cast over the home compared with Downers Grove, exacerbating the effect of climate noted here. Proximity of trees to houses in combination with a cooler, cloudier climate could also explain the preference for smaller tree size and slower growth rates in North Somerset and Torbay. Smaller, slower growing trees are less likely to physically dominate homes and therefore keep annoyances to a minimum. Downers Grove residents by contrast would pre- fer larger trees that provide more shade and which, being farther away, would not tend to dominate the home so much. Increasing age of the home owner can have a negative impact on opinions toward trees. Sommer et al. (1989) re- ported that opinions of trees within their study did not relate to any demographic variable except for age, in which older householders had a lower opinion of trees than younger resi- dents. Flannigan (2005) also found a significant correlation between increasing age and negative opinions of trees. In our surveys, North Somerset and Torbay respondents tended to be older than those in Downers Grove, which could be an- other explanation for their higher ratings of annoyances. Differences in species and management practices between Downers Grove and North Somerset/Torbay must also be considered as a possible source of variation in responses to benefits and annoyances. The three communities all had dif- ferent combinations of tree species, and the practice of pol- larding, which was commonplace in North Somerset and Tor- bay, did not occur at all in Downers Grove. Pollarding has a significant impact on the appearance of a tree and may tend to obscure the visual distinctions between the natural forms of species. It was not possible to compare ratings of individual species across communities in this data set, but the fact that ratings of overall satisfaction and the trees’ visual appearance were very similar across communities suggests that the visual appearance of “urban nature” is a valued component of urban life irrespective of variations in size, pruning practices, and species-specific characteristics. A final factor that might also have contributed to the dif- ferences in responses is the survey sampling procedure, which varied depending on the needs and interests of the local tree manager and researcher. In particular, one group of re- spondents in Torbay was specifically chosen to learn about residents who the local arborist thought disliked their trees. This sampling strategy would seem to increase the likelihood that the North Somerset/Torbay survey respondents would have more negative attitudes toward trees than their Downers Grove counterparts. In fact, however, the Torbay residents who were selected because of their supposed dislike of trees did not have significantly lower ratings of overall opinion ©2006 International Society of Arboriculture than the other respondents, and their ratings of most annoy- ances were not consistently higher than in the other commu- nities. Finding that residents in geographically and culturally di- verse communities held equally strong positive opinions about the trees outside their home is consistent with theories that appreciation of vegetation is an inherited consequence of human evolution (Heerwagen and Orians 1993). Another possible explanation, however, is that most inhabitants in these surveys actively chose to purchase a property with a street tree directly outside their home (and likely with trees in front of neighboring properties as well), and therefore both survey samples could be considered biased toward people who like street trees. Such a self-selection factor among resi- dents could help explain the consistently high overall satis- faction with trees across such a disparate group of tree species and management regimes. CONCLUSIONS Our survey results do not lend support to the view that UK residents consistently have negative attitudes toward trees in front of their houses. If that were the case, then the respon- dents in the North Somerset/Torbay survey would be ex- pected to give lower ratings to their trees than the Downers Grove respondents. In fact, respondents from all three com- munities had equally positive overall opinions of their street trees, although they did differ somewhat in their evaluations of particular benefits, annoyances, and attributes of the trees. We believe that the most prominent of these differences are related to variations in climate, the layout and size of prop- erties, and the proximity of trees to houses. Possibly as a result of a cooler, cloudier climate and closer proximity of trees to houses and gardens, respondents in the North Som- erset/Torbay survey preferred smaller trees, did not regard shade as a major benefit, and were more aware of annoyances related to the physical size and proximity of the tree. How- ever, these annoyances did not result in lower overall satis- faction with trees in North Somerset/Torbay than in Downers Grove. Intangible and aesthetic benefits appeared to predomi- nate in giving rise to high overall opinions of street trees, despite whatever annoyances the trees caused. Arborists in both the United Kingdom and the United States should be aware that local conditions of climate and spatial layout of streets and homes may affect the impact that various benefits and annoyances have on home owners and should take this into account when selecting species and lo- cations for planting trees. At the same time, they should not assume that complaints about particular problems with trees imply a generally negative attitude toward street trees among the populace. Community surveys such as the ones used in this research provide a way for arborists to obtain a more complete understanding of people’s attitudes toward trees. The analyses reported in this article show that the methodol-
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