The
purpose of this research is to provide a preliminary view of the meanings afforded
by the University of Illinois Arboretum to its users. Because the Arboretum
is viewed as an outstanding resource that is currently under utilized, this
study, and the ones that follow, are designed to tap the feelings, opinions,
and reactions of current users of the Arboretum. We will use visitor employed
photography, in which each participant takes photos of spaces that are meaningful
to him or her, in an exploratory effort to determine the role played by the
Arboretum in its users' lives. Follow-up surveys will take place with residents
of Champaign County, Green Industry members, and University of Illinois faculty
and staff. The overall objective of the research is to make the Arboretum a
better place for a greater number of users.
Collection of photos took place during fall 2008, thirty-eight individuals participated. The data set has been coded and awaits further analysis. In the early summer of 2009, questionnaires were mailed to 400 Champaign County residents. In the late summer of 2009, questionnaires were mailed to 100 Green Industry professionals in Illinois. During September of 2009, a web survey became available to all U of I faculty and staff to determine their usage. Findings will be organized into a report given to the College of ACES Dean of Research by spring of 2010.
This
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.
We contacted listserves to obtain relevant literature on the proximity variable
and are now working on writing literature reviews.
An survey questionnaire was developed and mailed out during the summer of 2008 to a random sample of residents from South Carolina, Georgia, Montana, and Colorado. Data were collected and entered into SPSS in the fall of 2008. Beginning data analysis has occured and is ongoing. Content analysis occured on the fire decision section of the survey and all data have been coded.
This
study involved an on-line / e-mail questionnaire that explored 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 magic project literature.
The instrument has been developed and administered for this project. List serves were contacted and the questionnaire has been posted on our website. We have received 59 completed questionnaires and are beginning the data analysis stage of the project.
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 received additional funding to conduct a study that examines environmental epiphanies through an empirical study. Interviews with epiphany experiencers have occured as well as data analysis. We are in the process of working on a manuscript for publication.
This 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.
In
this project, we are using information collected from the previous fire projects.
It became apparent that ecosystem health was a strong characteristic that participants
identified when examining forest ecosystems for acceptability and aesthetic
quality. Yet different people had very different ideas of what a healthy ecosystem
contained. Therefore 21 UIUC students and community members were recruited to
look at 12 images of forested areas and determine there perceptions of aesthetics,
ecosystem health, and fire risk. Participants relayed their thinking process
aloud and where prompted with specific questions from an interviewer. Data were
collected through this process tracing and number ratings given for each image.
The research aims to explore how members of the public evaluate forested environments
and to explore meanings of ecosystem health in the context of fire management.
The results of this study will be communicated to scientists and forest managers
to assist in the development of environmental management policies that better
serve the values and wishes of citizens.
Data collection occured the fall of 2007. Transcription of interviews occured in spring of 2008. Content analysis of trascripts in occuring presently.
This
project examines the role that early life experiences play in future environmental
behavior. Previous research has only looked 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 about early childhood experiences including
environmental experiences.
This project began as a Master’s project for a student in the lab and additional subjects for the project were collected in 2006. Data were combined to look for relationships between environmental concern/behavior and life experiences. We updated the literature review in addition to the results and discussion sections and submitted to the Journal of Environmental Education on March 9, 2007.
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 and accepted for publication for 2008.
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 and resubmitted with revisions in May, 2007.
Slide 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 have been 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 presented the results of this project for the Society for Human Ecology conference in October, 2006.
Conjoint 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 have also sent results to Terry Daniel based on our preliminary analysis. 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 is being worked on.
Our 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. We presented the results of these analyses at the Society for Human Ecology conference in October 2006.
New
Pet SurveyThis 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. Joanne presented results at the 2006 Society for Human Ecology conference in October.
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. Presently, we have data entered for 2003, 1995, 1992, 1988, and half of 1987. Data entry has been completed on this project, but data still needs to be cleaned, analyzed, and reported.
In this study, we are looking to study how percetions of one's place in nature may be changed by the presence of large predators in urban areas, specficially foxes.
Here we are looking to work with the Monterey Bay Aquarium and possibly other zoos and aquaria on the topic of magic and/or epiphanes. Do epiphanies occur in zoo/aquaria environments? We are hoping to collect further data on the epiphany process itself as well as its behavioral consequences.
Our epiphany study (magic) inspired an idea to look at the effects of asking interpretation particiants to tell their own epiphany sotires rather than listening to prepared environmental education material. We are working with Dr. Bill Stewart on this project.
Green trends and sustainability issues are at the forefront of our culture today. But how much do young people actually know about these issues? An online questionnaire hopes to examine perceptions of incoming freshman to help the University of Illinois understand where they need to focus for educating students about this topic.
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