326 tree request. An email was sent to all of those who requested a street tree from 2007 through 2012, which included a link to the online survey. Re- cipients were made aware of the voluntary nature of their participation, the purpose of the survey, its length, and that the survey would be active for three weeks. Reminder emails were sent aſter two weeks and 36 hours before the survey closed. This method of participant recruitment was adapted from the Tailored Design Method (Dillman 1999). If a respondent indicated that he or she was less than 18 years old, the survey would auto- matically be terminated, but this never occurred. The survey consisted of three main sections: 1) open-ended questions about URI and tree requests, 2) questions about specific values of trees, and 3) characteristics of the respon- dents. In the first section, two questions were asked: “How did you hear about URI?” and “Why did you request a tree from URI?” Open- ended questions have the advantage of not binding respondents or forcing their answers into preconceived categories, while allowing them to express their opinions in their own words (Fink 2009); this may therefore be con- sidered a better representation of their under- lying opinions. The open-ended questions were asked in the first section so that the sub- sequent questions about specific tree values would not prime or influence the responses. The second section of the survey focused on the specific values of trees. Respondents were asked to evaluate thirteen phrases that complete the sentence, “I value urban trees because they . . .”, using a six-point rank-item scale that ranged from 1 (not at all important) to 6 (very important). The values were modi- fied from a previous study (Westphal 1993), and contained a mix of phrases concerning aes- thetics, ecosystem services, and social values. Space was provided for respondents to specify up to three additional values. Responses gath- ered from the write-in option were re-coded to fit within the original categories whenever possible, for situations in which the write-in answers were redundant with original categories. The final section of the survey contained three questions about how long the respondent had lived in New Haven, whether the person owned ©2015 International Society of Arboriculture Locke et al.: Why Opt-in to a Planting Program? their home, and where they considered them- selves to be from. These questions were designed to help contextualize the population of respondents. Analyses The open-ended questions were first manu- ally organized into categories, using qualitative coding (Babbie 2007; Saldaña 2012), and then a single coder tabulated their frequencies. Re- sponses that described multiple and distinct reasons were placed into multiple categories. For example, a respondent indicated they re- quested a street tree because, “There were no trees in front of my home and it looked bar- ren,” which was categorized into the categories “lacked trees” and “aesthetics.” Fixed-response questions were tabulated to examine frequencies. A goal of this study was to understand per- ceptions of street trees among resident-initiated requests for street trees. Perceptions cannot be directly measured and may therefore be consid- ered a latent variable. The survey collected data on the values of trees, which can be measured, and can reasonably be linked to one’s under- lying perceptions. To identify latent variables for perceptions, the study authors employed Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), a statistical technique designed to aid the researcher in iden- tifying a set of latent constructs or “factors” that account for correlations among observed and measured variables (Fabrigar et al. 1999). As such, EFA is data-driven approach to reveal latent constructs from their proxy measures. In this instance, perceptions are the factors of interest, and values of trees are the measured variables. RESULTS The survey was emailed to all 460 people who requested street tree from 2007 through 2012, and 171 responded, for an overall response rate of 37%. Respondents were primarily long-term residents of New Haven (Figure 1). Nineteen per- cent of respondents indicated they had lived in the city for 10 to 20 years, while 52% lived in New Haven for more than 20 years. Nearly the whole sample of tree requesters owned their own home (90%). Forty-eight percent of respondents were from Connecticut, 45% from another state, and
November 2015
| Title Name |
Pages |
Delete |
Url |
| Empty |
Search Text Block
Page #page_num
#doc_title
Hi $receivername|$receiveremail,
$sendername|$senderemail wrote these comments for you:
$message
$sendername|$senderemail would like for you to view the following digital edition.
Please click on the page below to be directed to the digital edition:
$thumbnail$pagenum
$link$pagenum
Your form submission was a success. You will be contacted by Washington Gas with follow-up information regarding your request.
This process might take longer please wait
