324 Locke et al.: Why Opt-in to a Planting Program? Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 2015. 41(6): 324–333 Why Opt-in to a Planting Program? Long-term Residents Value Street Tree Aesthetics Dexter H. Locke, Lara A. Roman, and Colleen Murphy-Dunning Abstract. Many cities are making substantial capital investments in urban tree planting. Residents play active and diverse roles in enhancing and protecting the urban forest, and are therefore critical to many municipal-level policy objec- tives. The way residents perceive and value the urban forest can have implications for achieving urban forestry goals through residents and volunteers. However, urban residents are not a monolithic block or homogenous category; instead, they have diverse opinions, needs, and constraints. Moreover, relatively little is known about how residents hear about available resources, such as free trees, and decide to ‘opt-in’ to tree planting initiatives, choosing to plant and main- tain trees on or near their properties. The focus of this study was to address three questions about participation in a request-driven program that provides free street trees to residents of New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.: 1) Who requests trees through this program? 2) How did the requesters hear about this program? 3) Why did residents request free street trees? Survey respondents were primarily long-term residents of New Haven; mostly learned about the opportu- nity from their neighbors; and requested a street tree to replace a removed tree, because they value the aesthet- ics, and to a lesser extent the environmental benefits. Future research should systematically investigate differences between participants and non-participants in local tree planting initiatives, exploring possible trends across cities and programs. Such studies would identify opportunities and barriers to engaging private residents in efforts aimed at increasing canopy. Key Words. Connecticut; New Haven; Residential Ecosystems; Survey; Tree Planting; Tree Requests; Urban Tree Canopy. Many cities in the United States (Young and McPherson 2013) and around the world are mak- ing substantial capital investments in urban tree planting. Urban forestry programs oſten engage individual residents as active urban forest stewards (Fisher et al. 2011; Romolini et al. 2012)—those who care and/or advocate for trees. Volunteers are oſten actively engaged in the planting, mainte- nance (e.g., water, prune), and monitoring of trees (Still and Gerhold 1997; Roman et al. 2013; Silva et al. 2013), whether through self-motivated commu- nity action or recruitment of local, urban green- ing organizations. Although professional arborists may be hired to do these same tasks, budgetary and staffing constraints oſten necessitate engag- ing other stakeholders in urban tree stewardship, including the public at large (Moskell et al. 2010). Additionally, engaging volunteers and residents can garner public support for urban forestry pro- grams and create more informed constituencies ©2015 International Society of Arboriculture (Straka et al. 2005). Residents play active and di- verse roles in enhancing and protecting the urban forest, and are therefore critical to many munici- pal-level policy objectives. Regarding the planting process specifically, residents act as stewards by identifying available street tree planting locations, requesting new street and yard trees, and carry- ing out the physical labor of planting (Rae et al. 2010; Turner and Mitchell 2013; Locke and Grove 2014). The purpose of this paper is to learn more about those who request trees through planting initiatives, and why such residents choose to opt- in, in order to inform improve outreach strategies. The way residents perceive and value the urban forest can have implications for achieving urban forestry goals through residents and stewards. Homeowner tree support has been associated with general environmental concerns and pro-tree beliefs, and trees are particularly important when searching for a new place to live (Jones et al. 2012).
November 2015
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