52 the case of Winnipeg, which was surveyed mostly during the summer and its respondents were older and usually non-student (77% born in or before the 1970s; 17% retirees). Second, most of the universities in these three cities are close to the city center. Given that all places chosen for survey delivery were around the city center, where researchers expected a high concentration of people, the presence of students is not surprising. These observations suggest that although some of the city demographics may have been captured with this method, time of year, which is related to seasonal demographic movements, may be a big influence in demographic profiles. Ratings Results indicate that although there is a statis- tical difference in the importance of urban for- ests among some demographic categories, this difference is not substantive—almost everyone who participated in the surveys thinks urban forests are important. These results echo previ- ous ones based on different methods, mostly phone and postal surveys (e.g., Lohr et al. 2004; Zhang and Zheng 2011). Generally, the average rating of 4.6 in this study is higher than studies with similar 1–5 ratings, such as that one by Schroeder et al. (2006), with an average rating of approximately 3.6. This may suggest a more positive attitude towards urban trees by the Cana- dian respondents in these three cities. However, these ratings are ultimately incomparable given that some of the ratings in some of these studies are based solely on trees outside of the respon- dent’s home (Schroeder et al. 2006), individual tree species (Sommer et al. 1989), or street trees in different urban landscapes (Getz et al. 1982). The analysis suggests that respondents who are female, non-students, in Winnipeg, under hot- ter conditions, and born in or before the 1960s, rate the trees in the city at a slightly higher level of importance (Table 2). The influence of sex, age, and occupation, which in some cases can reflect income (i.e., non-students in this survey are usually profes- sional employees; see Table 1), on a higher appraisal of the urban forest, is corroborated by the observa- tions of Lohr et al. (2004) in the U.S. This is consis- tent with the general notion that females have been found to be more concerned for the environment than males (see Liere and Dunlap 1980; Jones and ©2016 International Society of Arboriculture Ordóñez et al.: Determining Public Values of Urban Forests Dunlap 1992; Dietz et al. 1998). The characteristics of the Winnipeg sample, including hotter weather (related to time of year, not overall climate) and a higher proportion of non-students and people born in or before the 1960s, may account for the high rat- ings in this city. Ultimately, controlling for weather, which in this survey was only captured as a temper- ature variation and is ultimately related to the time of year of survey delivery, and urban demographic shiſts should be considered in further applications of this or other survey methods in other cities, and may help clarify some of these observations. Value Themes A wide variety of reasons, including aesthetics, air quality, shade, environmental quality (i.e., ideas implying improvement or cleaning of the environ- ment), naturalness, well-being, recreation, bio- diversity, and sense of place, among others, were mentioned as to why urban forests are important. In terms of frequency of mention, the top themes were aesthetics, air quality, and shade (Table 3). When compared with other studies (e.g., Chiesura 2004; Flannigan 2005; Schroeder et al. 2006), these results reinforce the common notion that aesthetics is the most-easily elicited value associated with the urban forest. Some authors explain how aesthetics are central to an observer’s thought and conscious experience of the urban landscape (Ulrich 1986). Even if aesthetics is the first thing that comes to people’s minds when asked why urban trees are important to them, the results of this study also indicate that people associate air quality, shade, and environmental quality ideas with trees. The importance of shade is echoed in other studies (Lohr et al. 2004), although these results suggest a possible influence of weather, here expressed in terms of temperature variation and related to time of year (Table 4). This means that shade may have been more prominent in the data given that some of the responses were captured during summer months, particularly in Winnipeg, when solar radiation is high and people are more aware of the need for shade. It is difficult to say whether the influence of weather, related to time of year, on people’s responses is indicative of a general trend given that other survey-based urban-forest values studies have not reported weather conditions or time of year in their results.
January 2016
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