244 Treiman and Gartner: Public Attitude Survey in Missouri depending on the community. Consequently, requests for assistance could potentially come from multiple depart- ments within a community, making it difficult to deliver targeted and coordinated assistance. Most Missouri communities do not have a public tree ordinance, a written community forest management plan, or a comprehensive tree ordinance that addresses tree preservation during development. This points to the need for greater publicity of the value of trees, the value of planning for proper care, and the necessity to educate communities that trees are a part of a community’s infra- structure. Communities with a population less than 5,000 are less likely to utilize cost-share programs available through MDC. Communities that are willing to budget for tree care activities or that have a public tree ordinance are more likely to participate in state cost-share programs. The majority of community officials feel that basic tree mainte- nance activities, such as removal of hazardous trees and tree pruning, are important. Community forestry officials in Missouri, at both the local and state level, lack specific, systematic information on what the public actually knows about their urban forest resource, what they want from it, and how important it may be to them. The third phase of this evaluation of Missouri’s community forests was to survey citizens across the state to answer some of those questions. METHODS A survey was designed and tested that included questions asking respondents to rank their attitudes toward certain community forestry issues, such as hazard trees, topping, and urban sprawl. Respondents were also asked about Tree City USA status, where they would go for advice on urban forestry issues, and which department(s) of their local government was responsible for tree care and maintenance. Respondents were asked how they would vote on two hypothetical ballot questions: Would they be willing to pay a tax of varying levels to fund tree care and maintenance, and would they support establishing a new law to protect trees during development. Finally a set of demographic questions was included. One measure of the importance of urban forests and community forestry programs is quite simple: How much would people be willing to pay for them? Based on focus groups and pre-tests, the survey was printed in seven different versions, each with a different tax level in the question asking whether respondents would be willing to pay a tax to fund tree care and maintenance. Respondents received a survey form asking whether they would pay a tax of $x, where x was one value randomly selected from the set $1, $3, $5, $7, $10, $15, or $20 (U.S. dollars). These figures were pre-tested with a focus group. Interesting information (and more accurate estimates) might have been ©2005 International Society of Arboriculture gained by adding unrealistically high values to the question set (say $100 or $500), but this was felt to be politically unfeasible for a survey mailed out by a state agency. This method, referred to in economic literature as the contingent valuation method (CVM), allows the calculation of the population’s mean willingness-to-pay (WTP) for public tree care and maintenance. Mitchell and Carson (1989) devel- oped detailed guidelines for properly implementing CVM that are now widely followed and accepted, while Boyle (2003) has outlined appropriate analysis methods. The survey was designed to test for differences across different “size” communities (strata) within Missouri. The first six strata are defined by the population of the commu- nity, while the last four are reserved for specific communi- ties in St. Louis, Kansas City, and their suburbs (Table 1). A mailing list of 18,347 randomly selected names was purchased from USADATA. Respondents were randomly asked about one of the tax levels listed above. The mailings followed Dillman’s (2000) methodology and were conducted between March and May 2004. The overall response rate for the mailing list was 40%. This response rate is within the normal range for self-administered mail surveys. Response rates to such surveys have declined appreciably over the last 30 years, with the “average” mail survey obtaining a response rate of around 65% in the 1970s but only around 45% by the year 2001 (Baruch 1999; Connelly et al. 2003). Table 1. Survey strata: The survey was designed for analysis by each group (strata). Strata were defined by community size (1–6) or location (7–10). Survey strata 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Population/location Less than 5,001 Between 5,001 and 10,000 Between 10,001 and 20,000 Between 20,001 and 50,000 Between 50,001 and 150,000 Between 150,001 and 250,000 St. Louis suburbs Kansas City suburbs St. Louis Kansas City RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Natural Resource Issues and Community Forestry Programs Respondents were asked how important a set of issues were to them and also how well they thought Missouri was doing at addressing those same issues. All the issues were ranked as “important” or “very important” by the vast majority of respondents (Table 2), but significantly fewer respondents thought that Missouri was doing “very well” or “well” at addressing tree loss during development and stormwater runoff. This contrasts with findings by Lorenzo et al. (2000),
September 2005
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