Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 40(2): March 2014 Despite these efforts and a group’s best-laid plans, unwatered trees may fail to survive in harsh urban environments and become a sink of public or chari- table funds instead of being a source of public goods (e.g., the benefits of trees) (Appleyard 2000). The potentially high transaction costs (e.g., information- gathering, negotiating, and enforcement tasks) asso- ciated with a community group’s efforts to internally manage their members’ contributions to their collec- tive watering commitment make this outcome a real possibility, yet little research exists to define the mag- nitude of this problem. Moreover, little is known about the variety of strategies used by participating commu- nity groups to ensure maintenance of newly planted trees or their relative success or failure as defined by the general mission of tree-planting organizations— the survival and thus provision of urban trees and the empowerment of people in collective efforts for public good. Such information could greatly enhance nonprofits’ efforts (and by extension, municipalities’ efforts) in supporting successful urban tree-planting projects and the co-production of public goods. This paper addresses the dearth of information regarding neighborhood-planted tree management through a case study of Indianapolis, Indiana’s Keep Indianapolis Beautiful, Inc. (KIB) and their Neighbor- Woods tree-planting program. Specifically, research- ers examine the variety of tree-watering plans across Indianapolis neighborhoods (a specific type of com- munity group) and ask: How does tree survival, con- dition, and growth vary by neighborhood watering strategy and to what extent is watering strategy related to neighborhood collective action? The authors rec- ognize that, in this single case, study generalizable evidence of causal relationships cannot be provided. However, in using a combination of qualitative inter- view data and theory from rural, collective natural resource management settings, a better understand- ing of the nature of relationships between outcomes of neighborhood-initiated tree planting, watering strategies, and collective action can be discerned, pro- viding a foundation for future research in this area. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Using the Vocabulary of Institutional Theory and Collective Action Conversations with urban forestry nonprofits have led us to conclude that these organizations are oſten 85 very much aware that they are operating in social- ecological systems of both trees and people. Howev- er, they oſten struggle to find a language to describe the types of social change their tree-planting activities aim to inspire. KIB defines their vision as “a vibrant city, with every neighborhood landscape thriving and well, and its people empowered, mobi- lized, and devoted toward that vision” (KIB 2009). The study authors believe the vocabulary of collective- action literature is synonymous but arguably con- tains more efficient and effective language for the vision of such tree-planting organizations. It is also the belief of the authors that extending the applica- tion of institutional theories of collective action to the fields of urban forestry and urban ecology is a crucial step toward understanding urban neigh- borhoods in the context of sustainability (Mincey et al. 2013). In the remainder of this section, these social and institutional theories related to collective action and co-production of resources are reviewed. Collective Action and Co-production Collective action is an important concept in under- standing the co-production of urban services (Os- trom 1996; Ostrom 2009; Adger 2003; Marschall 2004). While varying definitions exist within the literature, most definitions of collective action involve a group of people with some shared inter- est whose realization depends upon the coordinated actions of that group (Meinzen-Dick et al. 2004). Co-production is a process by which citizens partic- ipate in the collective provision of local public goods in order “to communicate preferences and influence policymaking . . ., to assist in the implementation of the public good and to contribute to its preservation and continuation” (Marschall 2004, p. 232), and is, therefore, a form of collective action. Studies by Os- trom and colleagues in the 1960s on urban policing demonstrated that citizen involvement in the provi- sion of policing services (a form of co-production of these services) yielded enhanced service delivery (Ostrom et al. 1973). Additionally, Marschall (2004) found that citizen participation in the co-production of public safety and schooling efforts was related to citizen involvement in both formal and informal associations (or other forms of collective action). While not directly related to tree growth or survival, this literature suggests that the engagement of neigh- borhoods or other civic groups in the co-production ©2014 International Society of Arboriculture
March 2014
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