190 Conway and Lue: Resident Knowledge and Support for Private Tree By-Laws in Greater Toronto Area option of completing the survey online. The survey was mailed a few days later. If needed, a reminder letter was sent two weeks later, and second cop- ies of the surveys were mailed two weeks aſter the reminder letter. This multi-contact approach was used to increase the response rate (Dillman 2007). Simple summaries of responses were calculated. Researchers also examined differences between neighborhoods, municipalities, and several house- hold characteristics to explore if and how expe- riences or socio-demographics may influence knowledge and support. Specifically observed were the number of trees on the property, num- ber of trees planted and removed by the house- hold, as well as respondents’ length of residency in their current house, their education level, gender, and immigration status. Researchers hypothesized that those with more trees, and residents who had recently removed a tree, would be more likely to know about the by-law, while those who had recently planted a tree would be more supportive of the by-law given their recent investment. It was also hypothesized that longer-term residents would be more knowledgeable about the existence of the by-law due to typically higher levels of community engagement (Williams and Stewart 1998; Romig 2010), but that long-time residents would actu- ally be less supportive of the specific components of the by-law because the regulations are relatively new, restricting rights landowners previously had. Researchers were also interested in the rela- tionship between by-law knowledge and support and education and income levels given the atten- tion both characteristics have received in studies exploring the patterns of the urban forest and general support for urban forestry (Schwarz et al. 2015). Because respondents’ education level (presence/absence of university degree) was strongly correlated with household income (Cra- mer’s V 0.219, P < 0.001), only education level was examined, with the hypothesis that respon- dents with higher education-levels would be more likely to know about the by-law and have stronger support for the current version or a stricter by- law. Differences by gender were also examined, as previous research suggests women may be more supportive of urban forestry policy (Jones et al. 2012). Finally, researchers considered differ- ences between immigrants and non-immigrants ©2018 International Society of Arboriculture based on the hypothesis that newcomers may be less familiar with local municipal by-laws. These relationships were examined using cross- tabulations for the categorical variables (length of residency, education-level, gender, immigration- status), with Cramer’s V as the test statistic, and t-tests and ANOVAs, using Bonferroni’s post hoc test for continuous variables (number of trees, trees planted, trees removed), with an alpha of 0.05. All tests were completed in SPSS®. RESULTS Overall, 1,075 of the 2,000 surveys were com- pleted, while 81 were never successfully deliv- ered. This represents an overall response rate of 56%, varying from 47% in Brampton to 61% in Scarborough (Table 2). The overwhelming majority of respondents were homeowners in all five neighborhoods (96% to 99%), and live in single, detached houses (97% to 100%) in four of the five neighborhoods. The exception is the Brampton neighborhood, where 58% of respondents live in detached houses, with the remaining respondents living in semi-detached or fully-attached homes (e.g., townhouses). Just over half of respondents have resided at their current address for over 20 years, and 62% of respondents were born in Canada. Immigrants included in the study were born in over 70 dif- ferent countries, with 20 respondents simply stating they were born outside of Canada. The median household income varies between the neighborhoods (Table 2), while all neighbor- hoods included households above and below the metropolitan areas’ average household income of CAD $95,326 (Statistics Canada 2015a). The percent of respondents who completed at least a university degree also varied across the neigh- borhoods (Table 2). The survey data is in line with the census data for the neighborhoods (Sta- tistics Canada 2015a; Conway and Yip 2016); however, the representativeness of the 2011 survey is unclear (Statistics Canada 2015b). In all study neighborhoods except for Bramp- ton, a slight to moderate majority of respon- dents indicated that they had previously known about their municipality’s private tree by-law (Table 3). The Etobicoke and Scarborough neigh- borhoods were significantly less likely to have
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