46 Ordóñez et al.: Determining Public Values of Urban Forests Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 2016. 42(1): 46–57 Determining Public Values of Urban Forests Using a Sidewalk Interception Survey in Fredericton, Halifax, and Winnipeg, Canada Camilo Ordóñez, Peter N. Duinker, A. John Sinclair, Tom Beckley, and Jaclyn Diduck Abstract. With the majority of Canada’s population concentrated in cities, it is important to determine what people con- sider important in urban nature. The concept of values can help illustrate what people consider important in urban nature beyond utilitarian considerations. This is the case for urban forests. However, many studies about public opinion on urban for- ests do not capture expressions of importance, focus on all the trees of ence of urban forests. In Canada, most assumptions about Canadian urban forest values are based on results from the United States. In this study researchers present and analyze urban forest values data gathered with a sidewalk interception sur- vey in the cities of Fredericton, New Brunswick; Halifax, Nova Scotia; and Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to address some of these limitations. Respondents were asked to rate the level of importance of urban forests and mention the reasons. Results show that respondents rate the urban forest at a high level of importance and the reasons for this are aesthetics, air qual- ity, shade, and naturalness, among other themes. There was a tendency for older people, women, and non-students to rate urban forests at a higher level of importance. Weather, related to time of year of survey delivery, has a discernible influence on the way value themes are distributed in the data. The study authors infer that this method helps capture data on respon- dents’ psychological states instead of their intellectual awareness as to what they consider important about urban forests. Key Words. Canada; Fredericton; Halifax; Public Perception; Street Intercept Surveys; Survey; Urban Forest Attitudes; Urban Forest Values; Winnipeg. the city, or provide respondents with a direct experi- Trees are the dominant vegetation of many cities and provide many services to people (Nowak et al. 2001). Understanding what people consider important in urban forests, defined here as all the trees in a city, is vital for their management (Dwyer et al. 1991). Con- sidering urban citizens, or the public, in urban forest management goes beyond informing them about trees and taxing them for tree care (Clark et al. 1997). Assessing what the public considers important in urban forests is crucial for complementing, enhanc- ing, or broadening what guides their management. In determining what the public considers impor- tant about urban forests, a diverse array of psycho- social terms have been used, including attitudes, preferences, concerns, values, benefits, and services. This terminological diversity creates challenges for integrating findings on how people assign impor- tance to urban forests. The study authors discuss ©2016 International Society of Arboriculture these terms and their associated research here. It is not the researchers’ intention to provide an exhaus- tive review of the literature, but rather to focus on the basic interpretations of these concepts, and discuss their advantages and disadvantages in capturing what the public considers important about urban forests. The literature on environmental attitudes, pref- erences, and concerns focuses on monitoring the environmental orientation of demographic constit- uencies (Liere and Dunlap 1980; Heberlein 2012). It is interested in correlating people’s care for the environment with age, education, income, urban and rural lifestyles, and sex, among other demo- graphic characteristics (Dietz et al. 1998). Under this umbrella, some urban forest studies have dem- onstrated that most people have a positive attitude towards urban trees (e.g., Kalmbach and Kielbaso 1979; Getz et al. 1982; Sommer et al. 1989; Zhang
January 2016
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