Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 33(4): July 2007 265 for maintaining utility line clearance. Close et al. (2001) stud- ied attitudes and knowledge about topping of trees with and without utilities nearby but did not deal with directional prun- ing. Fazio and Krumpe (1999) studied knowledge of and attitudes about topping but not directional pruning or utility pruning. Flowers and Gerhold (2000) studied attitudes about a utility tree replacement program but not about utility prun- ing. A search for journal articles regarding utility tree pruning in Europe and elsewhere outside the United States yielded little. A nonresearch-based report from Australia mentioned poor esthetics of pruned trees as a reason for burying utility lines (BTCE 1997). Another article (Pauleit et al. 2002) men- tioned utility trenching as a limitation on urban tree success but did not mention utility pruning. Effects of education on acceptance of directional pruning and utility pruning have not been studied, but Brunson and Reiter (1996) in the United States and Jensen (2000) in Denmark found that people were more accepting of certain forest management practices if they were educated about them first. This article reports the results of a study that examined peoples’ knowledge of and attitudes about utility pruning and particularly directional pruning, and the effects of simple educational methods and messages on acceptance of direc- tional pruning as a valid method for utility line clearing. METHODS A mail survey was conducted of households in six cities in the western United States. Included cities and their electric utilities were Boise, Idaho (Idaho Power, investor-owned); Salt Lake City, Utah (Rocky Mountain Power, investor- owned); Phoenix, Arizona (Salt River Project, publicly owned); Albuquerque, New Mexico (New Mexico Public Service Corporation, investor-owned); Denver, Colorado (Xcel Energy, investor-owned); and Cheyenne, Wyoming (Xcel Energy, investor-owned). All six cities happen to be the largest cities and the state capitals (with the exception of Albuquerque) in their respective states, and all six are Tree City USA cities (NADF 2006b). All six utilities practice di- rectional pruning for line clearance as a matter of policy and all have received the National Arbor Day Foundation’s (NADF) Tree Line USA designation that recognizes electric utilities for their efforts to practice and promote good utility forestry, including directional pruning (Fazio 2002). In each city, 350 randomly selected households were mailed a self-administered questionnaire consisting of an in- troductory letter and a nine-page survey booklet in three sec- tions covering tree care practices and issues, including top- ping, utility pruning, and background information. The cover letter asked for the survey to be filled out by the adult, 18 years or older, in the household who most recently celebrated a birthday. Half of the households in each city also were sent a simple brochure entitled “Trees and Powerlines” produced by the researchers that describes why topping should no longer be done under power lines and explains directional pruning as an alternative (Kuhns 1995). The brochure de- scribes how directional pruning is done, what it looks like, why it is better for the tree, and how it keeps lines clear longer and includes simple diagrams showing what directionally pruned versus topped trees can look like. The brochure was labeled as having come from Utah State University with no utility company endorsement indicated. If a recipient re- ceived the educational brochure, they were asked to read it before completing the questionnaire; otherwise, the question- naires were identical. Surveys were sent out in early 2004 using the Dillman method, including an initial mailing with a cover letter and self-addressed stamped return envelope, a reminder postcard, and a second full mailing to those who had not returned the survey (Dillman 2000). Of the 2100 questionnaires mailed, 1786 were delivered and 384 returned for a 21.5% overall response rate. We then called 10% of the nonrespondents in each city and asked a sample of the survey questions, includ- ing several of the demographic questions, to get a sense of the nonrespondent characteristics. Data compilation and statisti- cal analysis was done using SPSS software. 2 was used to determine significance of association between variables, and analysis of variance and t-tests were used to determine mean significant differences with 0.05. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Response Rates and Nonrespondent Characteristics Six cities were included in this study to extend its applica- bility and to avoid singling out a particular utility or city. For that reason, and because a relatively low response rate results in fairly few respondents from any one city, most data are not presented by city. Numbers of responses were highest in Boise (91) and lowest in Phoenix (46) with slightly more responses from those who did not receive the brochure than those who received it (203 versus 181). As mentioned previously, because of our fairly low 21.5% response rate, we called 10% of nonrespondents in each city (141 total) to see how they differed from respondents. Re- spondents when compared with nonrespondents were older (mean age, 54 versus 50 years), were more likely to be male (57% male versus 38%), had higher educational attainment (56% with college degree versus 48%), had higher mean household income ($65,927 versus $56,460), fewer were renters (14% versus 18%), and had less time in their present home (12 versus 15 years). Respondents also had slightly higher urban tree knowledge (2.4 versus 2.3), trees were more important to them (4.1 versus 3.8), were more likely to have thought about utility tree pruning (1.8 versus 1.5), had at- tended a similar number of tree workshops, the same propor- tion had topped a tree, and they were less willing to pay for burying lines (2.1 versus 2.3) than nonrespondents (see sec- ©2007 International Society of Arboriculture
July 2007
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