University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
2002-03 Wildfire survey: This questionnaire involved the use of a hypothetical scenario and factual information to assess participant's opinions and feelings concerning different types of wildfire prevention techniques, emotions involving these opinions, and ratings of forest management goals. Participants lived both near and far away from national forests. Quantitative results were reported in a manuscript entitled, "The influence of wildlife cues and distance from the forest on fire management decisions, emotions, and management goal importance ratings," submitted for publication in Society and Natural Resources. We have received feedback and are revising and resubmitting, reporting on the distance variable only, with the addition of the qualitative results from the decision portion of the questionnaire, which we presented at the Society for Human Ecology conference in February 2004. We revamped the literature review for this manuscript based on the feedback we received and pulled together our results for a revised manuscript to send out for publication. This manuscript was submitted to Environmental Management on September 22, 2006.
Back to TopSlide show process tracing: This project also involved the use of a visually oriented survey through a self-guided laptop setup. Participants viewed a series of slides that depicted real scenes from the Boundary Waters Canoe area in Minnesota. Participants were U of I students and local Champaign / Urbana residents. We asked that participants rate the scenes on a scale of 1 to 10 while tape recording any thoughts, feelings, and memories they were experiencing while making these decisions. A subset of participants rated the pictures only without the process tracing component. We have transcribed these tapes, entered them into the Nudist program, and developed a coding scheme. Ratings and slide numbers have been entered into the Nudist program. The text units of this data set are currently being coded. We have compared the ratings of the process tracing participants with those who rated the slides without process tracing. We have done preliminary analyses on the results of this study. We have also collected literature relating to scenic beauty ratings. We are preparing a presentation of the results of this project for the Society for Human Ecology conference in October.
Back to TopConjoint choice process tracing: This project involved the use of a computer-simulated program that visually represented several different forest management techniques through the use of a self-guided laptop survey. We ran subjects in Minnesota (Boundary Waters Canoe Area) and locally with UIUC students and Champaign / Urbana residents. We asked that participants speak into a tape recorder in order to capture the processes that they experienced while making the survey decisions. We have transcribed these tapes, entered them into the Nudist program, coded the data, and analyzed the frequencies of the categories. We reported preliminary results of this study in a technical report for the North Central Research Station of the Forest Service. We would like to further explore this data set by identifying overarching thought processes that contribute to decision making. This analysis will inform and be compared to subsequent conjoint choice decision making analyses, as this is an ongoing project. We will possibly be writing a qualitative component to the overall results paper that Terry is working on.
Back to TopOur colleagues (Terry Daniel at Arizona and Brian Orland at Penn State) have started another phase of the conjoint choice experiment and are presently running subjects using a revised web-based survey instrument. We have collected more data from process tracing subjects using this new instrument. We have conducted these process tracing experiments with 9 UIUC students and 17 public subjects from the C-U area. We have transcribed these data and are in the process of analyzing the data. A presentation of the results of these analyses will take place at the Society for Human Ecology conference in October 2006.
Back to TopThis is a study that examines the independent variables of residents' proximity to National Forests and their cultural inclinations (individualist vs. collectivist) and how they affect resident forest management decisions and emotions. The study consists of three phases: a literature review of the proximity variable, a literature view of the cultural variable, and the development and administration of a pilot study (survey format) to test hypotheses developed from the literature reviews.
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We have been working with Herb Schroeder on a comprehensive literature review concerning peak aesthetic experiences in natural environments. We have collected literature on this topic and have developed a list of search terms as well as identified various people who are involved with the study of this phenomenon. We presented our preliminary findings of the literature review at the Environmental Horizons conference in April 2005 and at the Society of Human Ecology conference in October 2005.
We have received additional funding to conduct a study that examines environmental epiphanies through an empirical study. We have written a draft proposal and budget for this study, but still need to solidify the details of the administration of the study. We will then begin collecting data, though questionnaires and interviews. We presented this proposal at the Environmental Horizons conference in April 2006.
Back to TopThis is a project that explores how emotions contribute to public land management issues. This research will be used to develop workshops for land managers and to create an annotated bibliography that encompasses the relevant emotion literature. Joanne has conducted a field study, interviewing several forest managers in Arizona, in order to inform workshop preparations. She has also conducted several interviews with forest service personnel working in the Shawnee National Forest in Southern Illinois. She is planning on delivering full workshops to forest service personnel in November. Santa Catalina and Shawnee will be two possible sites of these workshops, in which forest managers will be given the tools to handle emotions within their work situations.
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In the above questionnaire, we also asked participants a series of questions involving their perceptions of nature. Specifically, we asked participants if they consider themselves part of or separate from nature. Also, we asked for words that come to mind when thinking of both a natural and unnatural environment. We have a similar data set from a restoration survey that occurred in the Chicago area in 1997. Both data sets have been entered into Nudist. We have devised and revised a coding scheme and conducted frequency counts. We entered the data from these categories and frequency counts into SPSS (quantitative statistical program) to determine if there is a difference between the data sets. There were a few significant differences between years, but no clear pattern.
In November 2004, we conducted a UIUC student e-mail questionnaire and collected 25 additional responses for comparison purposes with the above data set. We again asked subjects if they considered themselves a part of or separate from nature and words for natural and unnatural environments. This data has been transcribed, entered into Nudist (qualitative computer program), coded. We completed analyses on all three data sets and have decided to group them together and report mostly qualitative findings. A manuscript was submitted to Human Ecology Review on September 20, 2006.
Back to TopLongitudinal Resource Conservation Study:
Joanne has collected a series of data from several resource conservation surveys she has conducted through this lab. These questionnaires assessed participants' (Champaign, Urbana, Springfield) conservation practices related to recycling, waste reduction practices, and waste management regulations. We have resource conservation questionnaires from 1986, 1987, 1988, 1992, 1995, and 2003. However, not all of the questionnaires correspond item by item, which makes data entry and comparison a little tricky. We would ultimately like to conduct a longitudinal comparative study with this data. Data entry has been completed on this project, but data still needs to be cleaned, analyzed, and reported.
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This is a revision of the 2001-2002 study in which we surveyed a national sample regarding quality of life issues, household recycling and conservation practices, pet ownership and attitudes, and new environmental paradigm (NEP) items. We have taken feedback from our presentations of this data from the HDES (Human Dimensions of Environmental Systems) seminar and the SHE (Society for Human Ecology) conference and have revised the instrument for this study. The new questionnaire was sent out in mid May, 2006. We would eventually like to compare the two data sets and report our findings in the form of a journal article. We have received the completed questionnaires, entered the quantitative and qualitative data and are in the process of running analyses on the data. We will present a talk about these results at the 2006 Society for Human Ecology conference in October.
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This is an on-line / e-mail questionnaire that explores snorkeling and diving experiences. We are interested in snorkeling and diving experiences because they literally place a person in another world, or environment. It would also be nice to see if there is a connection between these activities and conservation behaviors. Additionally, we are interested in the common elements of these experiences, which may tie into the epiphany project literature. The instrument has been developed and administered for this project. List serves have been contacted and the questionnaire has been posted on our website. We have received 52 completed questionnaires and are still in the data collection phase of the study.
Back to TopThis project involves examining the role that early life experiences play in future environmental behavior. Previous research has looked only at individuals with high levels of environmental concern, but this project evaluates all levels of environmental concern. Thus, participants received several quantitative measures of environmentally responsible behavior and level of environmental concern (such as the GEB and NEP), which were then combined into one overall index score. In addition, participants were interviewed in order to learn details about early childhood experiences including environmental experiences. This project began as a Master's project for a previous student in the lab and additional subjects for the project were collected in 2006. Data are now being combined to look for relationships between environmental concern / behavior and life experiences. We are updating the literature review in addition to the results and discussion sections. The end result will be a manuscript for publication.
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