90 Nali and Lorenzini.: Perceptions of Tree Disease Table 2. The responses to the open question “What could be the cause of the death of this tree?” Suspected cau- ses (answers): 1: a disease; 2: I do not know/no response; 3: water shortage; 4: pollution; 5: bad management (pruning); 6: age; 7: adverse climatic factors; 8: others (include vandalisms, insects, wind, thunderbolt, soil defects). For details of levels of variables, see Table 1. All χ2 tests are significant for P < 0.01. Variables & levels Gender Age 1 Men Women Avg. % 15-19 20-30 31-50 50+ Education Avg. % Junior High Degree Avg. % Occupation Housew. Retired Student Profess. Manual Other Avg. % 43.8 26.0 35.5 17.7 40.0 39.8 36.3 35.5 12.7 42.9 19.1 35.5 29.1 39.1 16.6 56.2 45.4 68.4 35.5 2 12.0 31.6 21.2 43.5 19.2 8.0 24.7 21.2 41.8 18.8 21.1 21.2 32.4 20.2 17.1 13.9 9.1 15.7 21.2 3 8.6 11.7 10.1 2.0 10.0 15.6 8.8 10.1 7.6 12.5 2.6 10.1 8.8 6.6 9.9 6.9 25.4 0.0 10.1 4 Answers, % 5 13.6 4.3 9.2 18.4 5.6 4.3 13.0 9.2 8.8 9.5 8.2 9.2 4.9 7.6 17.2 13.9 5.4 5.3 9.2 perceptions (Macia 1979; Talbot and Kaplan 1984; Abello and Bernaldez 1986; Strumse 1996; Madge 1997; Lutz et al. 1999; van den Berg et al. 1998). Since personal attributes such as gen- der (Serpa and Muhar 1996; Sanesi et al. 2006), age (Todorova et al. 2004), occupation (Mutz et al. 2006), and education (Ben- net and Swasey 1996; Balram and Dragicévic 2005; Schroeder et al. 2006) have been reported to affect an individual’s opinions. Few studies examines the public perception of plant disease; Patel et al. (1999) focused how society defines forests and, in particular, forest “health” and this research provides a starting point for exploring commonalties and differences in scientific and societal views of this question. In the field of environmen- tal evaluation, a main broad distinction (e.g., see Gifford 2002) has been done between: a) “expert” or “technical” evaluation, based on either objective physical measures or expert judge- ments; and b) “lay” or “observational” or “subjective” evalua- tion, based on users’ observation and perception and influenced by place experience. The research literature on environmental lay evaluation has mainly reported a distinction (see Bonnes and Bonaiuto 1995; Gifford 2002) between environmental appraisal, which is more “person-focused,” and environmental assessment, which is more “place-focused”; in fact in the first case the evalu- ation pattern can be considered as the result of analytic process of knowledge which are coded in particular technical and sci- entific domains, whereas in the second case it can be viewed as result of daily psycho-social processes of knowledge, interpre- tation, and experience of the environment by the persons who use it. In our study, we observe a discrepancy between experts (phytophatological diagnosis) and layperson’s assessment (only in 35.5% of cases, the respondents give a correct answer). Such outcome is consistent with previous research findings (Bonnes and Bonaiuto 1995; Bonaiuto and Bonnes 2002; Bonaiuto et al. 2006) that reported a disagreement between expert and layperson assessment in the case of urban green areas from Rome, Italy. 8.4 5.2 6.8 4.0 3.7 12.3 6.2 6.8 7.6 7.2 5.7 6.8 6.9 5.4 9.4 4.2 9.2 5.3 6.8 6 3.4 10.4 6.7 8.2 5.6 6.2 7.6 6.7 2.5 3.7 18.6 6.7 9.8 4.3 9.9 2.1 2.8 5.3 6.7 7 2.6 2.0 2.3 1.4 3.7 2.2 1.6 2.3 10.1 1.8 1.0 2.3 1.6 3.8 2.8 2.1 1.8 0.0 2.3 8 7.6 8.8 8.2 4.8 12.2 11.6 2.0 8.2 8.9 3.6 23.7 8.2 6.5 13.0 17.1 0.7 0.9 0.0 8.2 Σ % 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 χ2 22.9 85.6 135.6 176.1 Q4: “Are You Aware That a Diseased/Dead Tree May Collapse and Make Injuries to People or Property?” This question had a multiple response format. The following options were given: Yes, No, No reply. Frequency analysis of the answers shows that a very large majority of respondents (86.2%) were aware of the risks, versus a mere 6.6% of void replies, and 7.2% of nega- tive responses. Damages to manufacts (e.g., parked vehicles) and severe injuries to people due to the collapse of trunks or branches of diseased trees have been reported frequently by media outlets. Q5: “Do You Have any Suggestions to Give Your Administrators Concerning the Management of Public Greenery?” At the end of the interview, the respondents were asked to ar- ticulate their personal thought and give suggestions to their ad- ministrators concerning the present status of public greenery. Answers containing similar concepts or meaning were consid- ered as addressing the same underlying motive, and thus grouped under the same representative theme, as reported in Table 3. It is evident how a large fraction of respondents (46.0%) consider care and maintenance the critical issues of public greenery man- agement, especially men (55.1%), over 50 (55.8%), graduated and employed people (professional 57.6% and manual 60.9%) and in particular there was a clear progression with age: from young people (29.9%) until over 50 (55.8%). Suggestions and proposals include a key theme, such as better qualification and technical professional formation of the personnel involved in cultural practises (mainly pruning of trees), more “quality” in the operational procedures, more financial investments, and more manpower involved. Surprisingly, 42.9% of the respon- dents had no suggestion (or criticism) to give the local admin- istrators concerning the management of green areas. Again, young people (58.5%), scarcely educated respondents (55.7%) ©2009 International Society of Arboriculture
March 2009
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