Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 42(1): January 2016 The survey did not elicit themes that are promi- nent in the urban forest literature. For instance, the economic value of urban forests is not identified by these survey respondents, although a consider- able number of studies refer to the economic value of urban forests (McPherson 2003; Donovan and Butry 2010; Roy et al. 2012; among others). This is also the case for urban forest contributions to human health and physical activity, which were not mentioned by respondents although they are widely discussed (e.g., Giles-Corti and Donovan 2002). One interpretation of this evidence is to observe how this elicitation method did not prompt respondents with answers, thereby inti- mating that what was captured reflects more of an awareness of respondents’ psychological state instead of an intellectual response to a pre- determined list of items (see Peckham et al. 2013). In contrast, the survey captured themes related to naturalness, biodiversity, personal well-being, and sense of place, which evoke how being connected to a natural environment, the ecological quality of the natural space, and the stimulation of positive psychological states, are important to people. These three themes were pointed out by other studies that explored what people consider important in urban woodlands, parks, and residential streets (e.g., Chiesura 2004; Tyrväinen et al. 2007; Arnberger and Eder 2012). Again, these themes do not reflect an intellectual response but rather an aware- ness of respondents’ psychological state. The authors of the current study speculate that these states are generated by the direct experience of the respondents with the urban forest, which echoes ideas found in recent qualitative stud- ies (Peckham et al. 2013; Sinclair et al. 2014). Limitations and Further Research An important limitation for this study was that re- searchers did not capture some socioeconomic vari- ables, such as income and location of residence, which have been proved to influence people’s attitudes toward urban vegetation (e.g., Grove et al. 2006). As explained in the METHODS section, the pilot surveys suggested that the current survey was not adequate to capture such personal information. Nevertheless, more research is needed to investigate how different method designs may help capture these types of data. 53 It was mentioned that at least some of the dif- ference in ratings of importance among cities could be explained by weather and time of year. Specifically, trees seem to be more important to respondents in Winnipeg, which was surveyed mostly during the summer (Table 2). The authors acknowledge that the difference in ratings may be related to other issues, such as public awareness or concern with urban forest loss. The limited length of the paper does not allow the authors to ponder at length on this matter, and so prefer to focus on what the data imply. Nevertheless, it is impor- tant to note that the difference in ratings is mini- mal (Table2). Ultimately, more research is needed to understand how demographic profiles are affected by time of implementation of a sidewalk- interception survey in different cities in Canada. The interpretative analysis helped in condens- ing the ideas related to what respondents con- sidered important about the urban forest. In this process, an informed judgment was made and oxy- gen was re-coded to air quality. The authors took into consideration that, although trees do produce oxygen, they contribute little to the maintenance of its atmospheric levels at a geological and plane- tary scale, given the time-frame for oxygen forma- tion, its atmospheric residence, and the significant ocean contributions in oxygen production (Junge 1974). Urban forests in general may contribute little to global oxygen atmospheric levels (Nowak et al. 2007). The authors speculate that respon- dents deem oxygen production as an impor- tant aspect of urban forests based on their early schooling, which tends to create an awareness, instead of providing critical scientific knowledge, of oxygen’s atmospheric cycling. Thus, reclas- sifying oxygen was preferred, and as previously explained, this action did not impact the relative importance of air quality in terms of its frequency of mention. Broadly speaking, the general, public notion that urban trees are mostly important for oxygen production needs to be explored further. Finally, the authors believe more research is needed to elicit urban forest public values in dif- ferent geographic locations and to generate ratings about the importance of trees in the city, based on comparable methods. Differences in the themes elicited through different methods sug- gest that unprompted and experiential methods ©2016 International Society of Arboriculture
January 2016
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