Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 35(2): March 2009 Demographic Profile As reported in Table 1, the demographic characteristics reported by the respondents show that they were evenly distributed across the levels of the measured independent variables. Slightly more of the respondents were male (53.1%) than female (46.9%), but this difference was not statistically significant. For the items re- lated to behavioural patterns, the study indicated 1) the respon- dents are concentrated in the age range between 20 and 50 years of age (57.8%), and 2) their educational levels is “senior high school” (71.1%); only 20.6% had completed this level and gone on to at least some additional education in university or techni- cal school (“Degree/Ph.D.”). Housewives were the largest single groups in the distribution of respondents according to occupation (32.4%). The demographic profile shows that participants were evenly distributed across the levels of the measured indepen- dent variables. This suggests that the questionnaire survey suc- ceeded in representing all categories of demographic variables. Q1: “Do You Frequent This Garden/Boulevard (a) often; (b) sometimes; (c) seldom?” Most of the respondents were customary (41.4%) or moder- ate (40.1%) frequenters of the venue were the survey was per- formed; only 18.5% were occasional visitors. We can assume that most of the participants had familiarity with the area and had several opportunities to observe the plants which were asked about. For this reason there are the three main components that Rosenberg and Hovland (1969) consider necessary to psycho- logical construct of attitude: cognition, affection, and behaviours. Q2: “Can You Recognize Differences Between This Plant (dead) and the Other(s) (healthy)?” As expected, the large majority of respondents had no difficulties in detecting relevant macroscopic differences between the dead trees and the surrounding healthy trees. Positive responses were 76.3%; negative were a mere 8.3% and missing responses (or “I- don’t-know replies) were 15.4%. Differences in macroscopical features between the two kinds of trees were dramatically obvi- ous even to nonexperts. The source of the “nonexpert” approach is the stimulus-reaction relationship of experimental psychology, which perceives the environment as the sum total of the stimuli to which an individuals reacts, a particular condition (e.g., tree disease) serving as a factor external to the individual (Misgav 2000). The psychophysical paradigm, which was adopted in this study, results primarily from the stimulus-response tradition of classical psychophysics, because there is a mathematical rela- tionship between physical characteristics of landscape and per- ceptual judgement of human observers (Daniel and Vining 1983). Q3: “What Could the Cause of the Death of This Tree Be?” Table 2 describes the responses to the open question aiming to ask the respondent about his/her hypothesis on the cause of the death of the tree, in relation to the demographic profile of re- spondents. Seven dominant answers were recorded, in addition to a myriad of isolated or uncommon (or extravagant) answers, which have been gathered in a miscellaneous “others” group. The correct answer (#1 in Table 2) was dominant, with a 35.5% of share. Young people (age 15-19), poorly educated people (up 89 to junior high school), and students responses were significantly lower than the average (17.7%, 12.7%, and 16.6% respectively). Men answered correctly at 43.8% versus 26.0% of women. Apart from a miscellaneous “others” category, white-collar work- ers and laborers were the occupational categories (professional 56.2% and manual 45.4%) which positively responded better than the average. As an average, a respondent out of five was unable to express any opinion regarding the causes of the death of the tree (response #2 in Table 2). This was particularly true amongst women (31.6%), very young people (43.5%), low-edu- cated people (41.8%) and housewives (32.4%). Chemical pollu- tion (namely of air, soil, and water) (response #4 in Table 2) was elected as cause by 9.2% of respondents. Young persons were particularly represented in this group (18.4%). Men were sig- nificantly more concerned with this theme than women (13.6% vs 4.3%). Students (17.2%) and white-collars (13.9%) were the occupational categories which responded in this way above the average. A very technical (but improper) response was “bad man- agement/pruning” (#5), which was given by an average 6.8% of respondents, with an interesting relevance of people aged 31–50 (12.3%). Age of tree was another noteworthy response (#6), with another 6.7% of respondents, mainly housewives (9.8%) and students (9.9%). Water shortage (#3) was a further frequent response (average 10.1%), with a relevant frequency in manual workers (including workmen and craftsmen); water relations are a critical issue in urban forestry (Whitlow et al. 1992) and re- cent summer seasons in Tuscany have experienced long periods of high temperatures and very scarce rain. Among the factors of perceived damage, damage caused by vandalisms, insects, wind, lightning; soil defects (#8) was the most frequent in particular for young people (12.2%), graduates (23.7%) and students (17.1%). There was an evident difference in response between men and women; in particular women were unable to express any opinion regarding the causes of the death of the tree (31.6% vs 12.0% for men) and in 42.4% of the cases the observers gave the wrong answers (#3–#8). A large majority of male respondents gave a correct answer with only 12.0% not responding. This is consistent with the fact that men and women also had differ- ent attitudes towards the cause of the death of this tree (or men have a greater ability to express one’s opinion). Many studies have reported a different relationship between gender and kind of response (Serpa and Muhar 1996; Hitchmough and Bonugli 1997; Dunnet and Qasim 2000; Knez 2001) because there are differences in the perceptive and cognitive systems of women and men often resulting in differing statements: male persons are usually more trained in geometrical reasoning than females and more frequently instructed to use the left hemisphere of their brain (Naor 1985). Answers differed between young people (ages 12–19), and over 20 who gave higher ratings to disease versus other suspected causes. This result showed that adult participants prefer to express their opinion even if wrong than to not respond or say “I do not know”; on the contrary, young people have the opposite behavior. There are differences in answers based on occupation; in particular students represent a homogeneous age group, and the variability of their social backgrounds is usually smaller than that of society at large, in fact students tended to give higher ratings to no correct an- swer (66.3%) or no response (17.1%), than other respondents. Previous research has shown that a subject’s personality, cul- tural, and occupational backgrounds have an influence on their ©2009 International Society of Arboriculture
March 2009
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