City Park Visitation and Attitudes about Urban Forests: Exploring the Relationship

We looked at how urban green space visitation relates to knowledge and attitudes about urban forests. Using data collected from a mailback survey that we randomly distributed to residents in Portland, Bend, Eugene, and Springfield, Oregon, we looked at urban forest knowledge, attitudes about urban nature problems and threats to urban forests. We used t-tests to look at possible differences in attitudes and knowledge between frequent and infrequent visitors to urban green spaces. Frequent visitors were significantly more familiar with the terms “ecosystem” and “urban forest. ” Frequent visitors generally rated problems created by urban green spaces as less severe. Few differences were found for attitudes about threats to urban forests. Our results suggest that city green space usage has a relationship with attitudes about urban natural resources. Promoting usage of such areas could positively affect public attitudes and support for urban natural resources and management. 1.0 Introduction The majority of ecosystem services research has principally focused on the provisioning and regulating services (Chan, Satterfield, & Goldstein, 2012). Molnar and Kubiszewski (2012) reviewed over 3700 published papers and found that provisioning services and regulating services each constituted about 35% of the total papers, while cultural services research papers constituted just over 5% of the total. Cultural services provide benefits such as reflection or aesthetic appreciation that are hard to quantify but are highly valued (Chan et al., 2012). Omitting cultural services from ecosystem services studies could result in suboptimal natural resource decisions (Faehnle, Backlund, & Tyrvainen, 2011). One of the ways to expand our understanding of cultural services is to examine how outdoor recreation experiences influence public attitudes and perceptions of ecosystem services. 2 PARK VISITATION AND ATTITUDES Relationships between outdoor recreation participation and environmental attitudes and behavior have been studied since the mid-70s beginning with the work of Dunlap and Heffernan (Teisl & O’Brien, 2003). Dunlap and Heffernan (1975) suggested that there would be a positive association between participation in outdoor recreation and pro-environmental behavior, and that different types of recreation activities would be associated variously with pro-environmental behavior. Since Dunlap and Heffernan’s seminal study, the topic area has received considerable attention. Subsequent research has continued to confirm, for the most part, that there is a significant positive relationship between outdoor recreation participation and pro-environmental attitudes and behavior (Tarrant & Green, 1999; Teisl & O’Brien, 2003; Thapa & Graefe, 2003). Considering the proposed relationship outdoor recreation has with environmental attitudes and behaviors, and the relative lack of empirical study of recreation in the context of ecosystem services, we wanted to explore whether visitation to urban green spaces would have a relationship with attitudes about ecosystem services. We defined an urban green space as a park, forest reserve, or other designated natural area located in, or close to, their city. We looked at whether recreation experiences in urban green areas were associated with different levels of knowledge about urban forests and ecosystem services as well as attitudes about problems associated with urban forests and differences in perceived threats to urban forest health. 2.0 Methods This study was carried out using a mixed-mode approach, in which focus groups constituted the qualitative portion of the research and a mailback questionnaire constituted the quantitative component. Our research sites were the cities of Bend, Eugene, Portland, and Springfield, Oregon, in the United States. All research activities were reviewed and approved by the university’s Institutional Review Board. 2.1 Focus groups Focus groups were carried out early in the project to help us obtain background information, stimulate new ideas, and learn about how participants thought and talked about urban forest ecosystem services (Berg, 2007). Using customary methodology (Krueger & Casey, 2009) we conducted focus groups with two categories of participants: natural resource professionals and non-governmental stakeholders. The first and second author conducted the focus groups whose outcomes directly contributed to questionnaire development and later data interpretation. 2.2 Questionnaire distribution Analysis of focus group outcomes was combined with a review of urban ecosystem services literature to develop our mailback questionnaire. The questionnaire was mailed in the fall of 2011 to randomly selected recipients in Bend, Eugene, Portland, and Springfield, Oregon, using a modified Dillman approach (Dillman, Smyth, & Christian, 2009). Using Oregon Department of Motor Vehicle driver and state identification data, we mailed a postcard announcing the project and the impending arrival of the questionnaire. Recipients received a full survey package that contained the questionnaire, a cover letter, and a self-addressed, postage paid return envelope after the postcard. A second thank-you postcard was mailed about two weeks after the questionnaire that also reminded people about responding. A second full survey package was mailed out about two weeks after the reminder postcard. Addresses for 144 out of the 3900 people we attempted to contact by mail were not valid, and we received 12 refusals. There were 734 completed surveys returned for a final response rate of 20% (734/3744). We conducted a 3 J. W. R. Baur et al. / 2014 NERR Proceedings nonresponse bias check and found that non-respondents did not significantly differ from respondents. 2.3 Questionnaire items 2.3. 1. Knowledge about urban forests and ecosystem services Members of the public commonly have differing levels of knowledge about forest management, and such varying knowledge can have an impact on their responses and attitudes about management (Loomis, Bair, & Gonzalez-Caban, 2001; Toman, Shindler, & Brunson, 2006). We asked respondents about how familiar they were with three terms – urban forests, ecosystems, and ecosystem services. Available scale responses ranged from 0, “Never heard this term before,” to 6, “Very familiar with this term. ” 2.3. 2. Ecosystem disservices/problems Ecosystem functions provide services to people but they also generate disservices such as allergens, leaf litter, and sidewalks damaged by tree roots (Lyytimäki, Petersen, Normander, & Bezák, 2008; Lyytimäki & Sipilä, 2009). We asked respondents to rate a variety of disservices commonly associated with urban forests, including those mentioned above. We asked people to rate the severity of the disservice on a scale from 0, “Not a problem at all,” to 6, “A severe problem. ” 2.3. 3. Threats/challenges to urban forests Members of the public often possess different attitudes about natural resource management than trained professionals (Eisenhauer & Nicholson, 2007; Raik, Lauber, Decker, & Brown, 2005). Urban forest managers need to consider public perceptions about threats to urban forest ecosystem health (Barro & Dwyer, 2000; Di Giulio, Holderegger, & Tobias, 2009) to understand how the public may respond to management activities (Bright, Cordell, Hoover, & Tarrant, 2003). We asked a series of questions about public perceptions of the severity of certain threats to urban forest health. Respondents identified threat severity on a scale from 0, “No threat at all,” to 6, “A severe threat. ” 2.4 Data analysis We used t-tests to evaluate differences between frequent and infrequent visitors to city green spaces. We developed the frequent/infrequent user categories by median usage of 35 visits annually. Those at or below the median were called infrequent users, and those above the median were frequent users. Cases were weighted by age, ethnicity, and gender, using 2010 US Census data. Due to their proximity, the cities of Eugene and Springfield were combined as a single urban center for the purposes of analyses.