Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 33(4): July 2007 269 (trust or strong trust) were much less likely to want to pay anything to bury lines. Interestingly, the respondent’s income was not significantly correlated with the amount they were willing to pay to bury lines (data not shown; 2 8.028, P < 0.783), but age was significantly negatively correlated with willingness to pay (data not shown; 225.955, P < 0.011). Respondents aged older than 65 years were almost twice as likely to answer “no increase” as those aged 21 to 35 years. The strong negative correlation we observed between will- ingness to pay and trust seemed counterintuitive at first, but makes sense on closer examination. This result simply means that people are much less likely to want (to advocate for?) line burial if they trust that the trees will be treated well during pruning. If utilities want to avoid the push to bury lines where trees and utilities conflict, they would be well served to work to increase peoples’ trust in the quality of their pruning practices. Regardless of peoples’ willingness to pay, utilities usually seem to prefer alternatives other than line burial, presumably because of technical difficulties, costs that might not entirely be passed along to rate payers, or impracticality. Even with directional pruning as an option, they usually seem to prefer removal of large-maturing trees, and if the trees are replaced, replacement with small-maturing trees. This is somewhat at odds with our results, in which respondents slightly disagreed that large tree should be replaced with small trees. Little literature is available on line burial and trees, although Good- fellow (1995) described various engineering alternatives to line-clearance pruning, including burial. He points out that buried electrical utilities in urban areas are generally more expensive to build and that often “there is little or no financial incentive for a utility to pursue conversion” to underground lines. However, he also feels that “underground construction is often the only acceptable method for new construction in urban and residential areas” (Goodfellow 1995), and he points out some trends that make it seem likely that line burial would become more common in the future (his article is now 11 years old). An Australian government report (BTCE 1997) lists improved tree esthetics through avoidance of utility pruning as a benefit of line burial. Tree Appearance Our impression in dealing with utility customers and foresters over the years is that the primary reason people react nega- tively to directional pruning for line clearance is aesthetics. Certainly this goes along with the findings presented earlier, in which respondents agreed that utility pruning in their area harms tree aesthetics. To explore this further, we asked re- spondents to react to four drawings of trees pruned for utility clearance: (A) a topped tree with lines overhead, (B) a tree pruned to a V with lines overhead, (C) a tree pruned to an L with lines to the side, and (D) a one-sided tree with lines to the side (Figure 5). We explained that trees take on a certain appearance depending on how they are pruned for utility clearance and that the diagrams showed how they might look shortly after pruning. A weakness of this method is that the drawings were arguably idealized representations of topped and directionally pruned trees; nevertheless, the results are interesting. Also, note that earlier in the questionnaire, top- ping was defined as “the practice of rounding over or cutting back a tree’s crown, usually to keep it smaller than it would normally grow” and three photographs were included of some fairly severely topped trees. Respondents were asked whether they preferred the look of A or B when lines are overhead, the look of C or D when lines are to the side, and whether A or B is better for the tree and better for line clearance. They also were asked to choose the one that looks worst—A, B, C, or D—and the ones most like the utility pruning done in their area (Figure 6). Respondents greatly preferred the appearance of the topped tree to the V’ed tree (Figure 5). However, the topped tree admittedly had a fairly nicely “hedged” look to it rather than the gnarly look that topped trees often have. Acceptance of the V and L was next, and fairly equal, and the one-sided tree looked the worst by far (Figure 6). When forced to choose the looks of the L’ed tree versus the one-sided, respondents pre- ferred the L with its greater amount of retained crown (Figure 5). Receiving a brochure made the look of the V more ac- ceptable (2 37.526, P < 0.0001) in comparison to the topped tree, but the topped look was still preferred almost two Figure 5. Proportion of respondents who prefer the look of A or B, think A or B is better for the tree, think A or B is better for line clearance, and prefer the look of C or D. Data are shown with and without a brochure. Stars indi- cate significant association between respondents’ choices and receiving a brochure (2 and 0.009, respectively). ; P < 0.0001, 0.0001, ©2007 International Society of Arboriculture
July 2007
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