Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 41(6): November 2015 Studies regarding public attitudes toward exist- ing trees could inform outreach approaches for tree planting programs. Recent research in Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon, U.S., suggest residents in neighborhoods with relatively higher canopy—composed of longer-term residents with higher educational attainment—plant trees pre- dominantly as part of other landscaping practices and as replacements for removed trees (Dilley and Wolf 2013; Donovan and Mills 2014. These var- ied studies point toward a common thread: the importance of tree aesthetics to urban residents. However, there can be important local and regional variation in residential perceptions of urban trees (Schroeder and Ruffolo 1996; Schroeder et al. 2006). Urban residents are not homogenous; rather, they have diverse opinions, needs, and constraints. In Australian cities, Kirkpatrick and colleagues (2012) identified seven distinct clusters of general attitudes toward trees from a photographic elicitation study. Their results indicate that multiple sub-populations exist even among those who might respond favor- ably to new trees. This corroborates other research in Baltimore, Maryland (Grove et al. 2006; Troy et al. 2007; Boone et al. 2010), and New York City, New York, U.S. (Grove et al. 2014), where the amount of tree canopy and the opportunities for additional tree canopy in private residential land vary not just by socioeconomic status, but also by indicators of lifestyle and life stage, such as age and family size. These relationships between residents’ perceptions and values, canopy cover, planting opportunities, and individual or household characteristics pro- vide useful insights to engage the public in urban forestry initiatives, recognizing the diversity in pref- erences, opinions, and opportunities. This paper aims to address a gap in knowledge in the urban forest profession by attempting to understand why residents opt-in to a specific tree planting program. As the preceding paragraphs indicate, prior research has addressed residents’ attitudes towards urban forests. However, 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. Because residents play many roles in caring for the urban forest, it is critical to understand who participates and why, because this will improve outreach and 325 engagement strategies needed to cultivate endur- ing stewardship of urban natural resources. 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 request- ers hear about this program? 3) Why did residents request free street trees? The principle motivation was to elucidate the mechanisms behind request- based tree planting programs in this case study city. METHOD Study System With a population of 129,779 spread over approxi- mately 50 km2 , New Haven is the sixth most populous city in the New England area (U.S. Census Bureau 2011) and is situated approximately halfway between Boston, Massachusetts and New York City, New York, U.S. New Haven has a temperate climate. Like many cities in the northeastern United States, New Haven can be considered a post-industrial urban area. Street trees in this study were distributed through a non-profit organization, the New Haven Urban Resources Initiative (URI). In 1991, URI was formed as a financially independent non-profit partnership with Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S. (URI 2015). URI is currently the official non-profit partner of the TreeHaven10k, New Haven’s reforestation program. Acting as a contractor for the largely city-funded plant- ing campaign, URI also uses the opportunity for a green job skills training program, and the trees are planted by high school students or adults with barriers to employment (Walsh 2013). Planting the trees solely based upon requests by residents, who must commit to follow-up watering, supports URI’s mission of community-driven stewardship. Out- reach strategies have expanded in recent years. The TreeHaven10k program includes street banners, advertisements in public transportation buses, can- vassing door-to-door in low-canopy neighborhoods, tabling at public events, and emails from the city. Data Collection A survey was used to collect information about who requests trees through URI and why. URI maintains a list of email addresses for each street ©2015 International Society of Arboriculture
November 2015
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