Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 44(2): March 2018 Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 2018. 44(2):59–72 59 Why Count Trees? Volunteer Motivations and Experiences with Tree Monitoring in New York City Michelle L. Johnson, Lindsay K. Campbell, Erika S. Svendsen, and Philip Silva Abstract. Volunteer programs can benefit from a deeper understanding of the motivations and experiences of people engaged in citizen science. Research to date has studied motivations of citizen scientists and tree-planting volunteers. Less work has focused on tree-monitoring volunteers, a role that is rapidly increasing as more cities involve the public in monitoring the urban for- est. Researchers conducted an assessment of volunteers (n = 636 respondents) of the TreesCount! 2015 street tree census in New York City, New York, U.S., to understand volunteers’ demographics, motivations, experiences, and levels of civic engagement. Semi- structured interviews (n = 40) were also conducted on a subset of the initial assessment respondents, to deepen understanding of these factors. Like tree-planting volunteers in previous studies, volunteers were more likely to be highly educated, female, white, and with high income levels. Top self-identified motivations for participation included personal values, wanting to contribute, and a desire for education or learning. Demographics correlated with different motivations, suggesting opportunities for tar- geting recruitment efforts to better reach underrepresented populations. Researchers also found motivations shiſted slightly in post-census interviews, also identifying a new theme of exploring the city. Street-tree monitoring presents opportunities for con- tributing to one’s community or city, and for learning about trees and urban nature, suggesting these acts of engagement can both strengthen connections to social-ecological systems and provide personal benefits. At the same time, considering volunteer moti- vations, experiences, and outcomes when designing programs can positively affect participation turnout, effort, and retention. Key Words. Citizen Science; Civic Engagement; New York City; Stewardship; Tree Monitoring; Urban Forest. Citizen science programs engage the public in sci- entific endeavors and are an increasingly popular approach to producing scientific knowledge. Jordan et al. (2012) defines citizen science as “partnerships between those involved with sci- ence and the public in which authentic data are collected, shared, and analyzed.” With advance- ments in technology, it has become easier for people to participate in data collection, analysis, and interpretation for projects occurring in their own communities. Citizen science programs are often organized by academic institutions and non-profit organizations, but government agencies have begun taking notice and integrat- ing the public into data collection and analysis. Engaging community members in science can also help strengthen management of natural re- sources, through linking monitoring, research, and policy making (Kofinas 2009). Citizen sci- entists themselves can benefit through increased subject knowledge and scientific skills, as well as an increase in self-efficacy related to addressing environmental issues (Merenlender et al. 2016). City-level tree-monitoring programs have begun engaging the public in monitoring efforts (Vogt and Fischer 2014), yet these programs are understudied with regards to volunteer motiva- tions and demographics. Previous research on tree monitoring has focused on biophysical data collected through tree inventories and censuses to understand the health, growth, and longevity of the urban forest (Lu et al. 2010; Roman et al. 2013). Such municipally-led projects fall into Miller-Rushing et al.’s (2012) category of con- tributory citizen science, and they may or may not involve processing and analyzing data to ©2018 International Society of Arboriculture
March 2018
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