©2023 International Society of Arboriculture 294 Parajuli et al: COVID-19 Impacts on Private-Sector Urban and Community Forestry the previous studies (Carland and Carland 1991; Fair- lie and Robb 2009; Farlie 2020), none of the demo- graphic variables were found to be significant in the regression analysis, which may be due to the lack of variation in these variables within our sample. Our ordered logistic regression results suggest that among industry types, only businesses in the nursery and garden supply stores were found more likely to realize positive perceived impacts of the pandemic. The perceived COVID-19 impact on nursery and gar- den supply stores was statistically significant and had a relatively higher odds ratio than other industry types, indicating higher sensitivity to the pandemic environment. Supply chain problems such as the timely availability of fertilizer and other landscape supplies that might have been categorized as non- essential during pandemic lockdowns may have con- tributed to this sensitivity. Along with the supply chain restrictions and the changes in consumer behav- ior, these stores had to manage significant challenges in matching inventory with consumer demand and in operating at reduced capacity (Marwah et al. 2021). Employee turnover and business uncertainty were found to be significant challenges with negative per- ceived impacts on U&CF businesses in the Southern United States. The US federal government, through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and the Paycheck Protection Program, provided payments to workers impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic that were competitive with their actual pay, making some employees prefer the government checks over working as employees during the public health crisis. Small- and medium- size businesses had challenges keeping their employ- ees at work. Meanwhile, high demand for labor in some sectors led workers still in the labor market to switch jobs in pursuit of better-paying opportunities. Mean- while, Chetty et al. (2020) found that COVID-19 had a V-shaped impact on trained and experienced employ- ees, meaning that the pandemic-induced, uncertain business environment led to widespread job losses for more extended periods for the untrained and inex- perienced employees, while the trained employees were quickly rehired after layoffs. For this reason, relief programs and governmental assistance targeted to small- and medium-size businesses in the U&CF sector might have mitigated the pandemic impacts to some extent. Such targeted programs would be par- ticularly impactful for businesses that are not designated as “essential” but are still vital in main- taining the supply of and demand for U&CF products and services. For instance, Rihn and Jensen (2022) reported that the Paycheck Protection Program allowed businesses in the green industry in North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina to retain 8,516 jobs, equating to approximately 9.5 to 18.3 jobs per firm on average. Future research should explore the impacts of gov- ernment assistance programs such as the Paycheck Protection Program on the various industries within the larger green industry to compare how benefits were distributed and realized among different sectors, regions, and business types. Lastly, a couple of research caveats are worth not- ing. First, despite our multiple survey advertising efforts to recruit and motivate private businesses to participate in the survey, we were able to achieve only a 3% response rate from the total contacted pri- vate businesses. The low response rate has become a common trend in recent years (Cleary et al. 2021; Hoy et al. 2022), due probably to the proliferation of survey requests that have come with increased tech- nology and mobile device use (Manfreda et al. 2008). Allocating time to work on the survey without any monetary or in-kind incentives may not be an attrac- tive option for private company personnel who were extra busy meeting the growing demand for their businesses during the pandemic. Moreover, our sur- vey included questions asking some sensitive infor- mation such as annual sales and revenue, which most private companies might be reluctant to share with others through an online survey. Second, the per- ceived COVID-19 impacts would have been worse in the first few weeks of the pandemic when strict lock- downs were imposed, compared to the first half of 2021 when the pandemic was more normalized with vaccination and other recommended policies. These private businesses could have realized a swift nega- tive impact during the lockdown periods, but the overall impacts could have been stabilized over the following year in 2021. Our study did not attempt to separate the perceived pandemic impacts between these 2 different periods, which might have resulted in the perception of an average neutral impact of the pandemic on the U&CF businesses by the time our study was conducted.
November 2023
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