Public Survey

Methodologies

According to F. Petermann (Germany, 1979) and U. Proebstl (Germany, 1988) questionnaire surveys as well as group discussions are two adequate methods of socio-empirical research for assessing the public attitude towards a problem which has to be investigated. While group discussions in certain cases are even a tool to assess the behaviour of the interviewees, it is not permitted to deduce the respondent's real behaviour from the results of a written survey.

To identify what the public preferences towards forest aesthetics and forestry are, a quantitative survey was chosen as suitable tool within the framework of the FORAM-Project in Germany. The complexity of the questions asked in the survey regarding the project themes was the reasoning behind the necessity of using group-discussions as a qualitative research methodology to investigate why the public like or dislike certain forest landscapes, silvicultural management methods and certain landscape elements which are mainly the results of forestry or agriculture.

Group Discussions

Introduction

During the 3rd Project Meeting held in Spain (May/June 1996) a decision is arisen from diverse discussions between all Partners that group discussions would be a supplementary tool for getting detailed and personal information about what preferences people have regarding forest aesthetics and forestry issues and where these preferences emerge from. This second aspect is quite important in view of further guidelines.

The group discussion can be classified as an "exploratory method". It is suitable for structuring a new problem which yet has not been clarified, and for gathering a person's deeper opinions and motives since these aspects need to be considered. The advantage is that the moderator has the possibility to first go more into the personality of each interviewee and second identify the reasoning behind preferences being stated. Nevertheless it must be taken into account that for any reasons the moderator - conscious or unconscious - might influence the opinion of persons who are taking part in the discussion. To reduce this danger as well as possible the discussion leader has to be a well trained and experienced psychologist who is also well informed about the theme which is to be investigated. Several meetings should precede together with an expert in order to grant for a detailed information exchange and precise questions.

In co-operation with the Consumer Research Institute (Keppler-Konsumforschung GmbH Stuttgart, Germany) both group-discussions were organised professionally. It was decided to have 2 groups at different places with people from different locations, i.e. urban and rural population.

Location: Institute of Prof. Keppler at Stuttgart Location: Nature Park Administration Building at Beuron ("Naturparkhaus")

The number of panellists was limited to about 10 persons for each group. They were recruited professionally by the Consumer Research Institute according to the visitor profile (age, sex, education, etc.) of the Park which had already been assessed in a previous German research project (AMMER, U. ; PROEBSTLE, U.; THUMANN, W. and PLAUMANN, U.: "Befragung der Erholungssuchenden im Naturpark Obere Donau", 1994). All panellists should be familiar with the region Obere Donau (Study Area I) to have a common basis for discussion.
 
Group
Location
Participants coming from
Group Size
Sex
Date
1
Stuttgart
(Keppler-Institute)
city
10
 Female: 3 

Male: 7 
17. April 1997
7:00 p.m to 10:0 p.m
2
Beuron
(Nature Park House)
countryside
11
 Female: 2 

Male: 9 
02. May 1997
4:00 p.m to 7:00 p.m

Tab 1: Overview about the two group-discussions in Germany

A main theme - "Leitfaden" - for both discussions was elaborated together with a professional forest scientist from the Faculty of Forestry/University of Munich in order to grant for the expert knowledge regarding forestry issues. Both, the group of local population selected from the region Obere Donau and the group from Stuttgart were invited by the Keppler Institute for carrying out the discussions. In order to refund their expenses and to make the participation more attractive all participants got a dinner snack and received three "prices": GM 50,--; the booklet "Nature Park Guide" and one weekend-voucher for the train "Naturpark-Express".
 

Procedure of Group discussions

Both group discussions were led in the same way. Thereby a well prepared "Leitfaden" was the main skeleton for the whole procedure which had been elaborated by the FORAM team in collaboration with Prof. Keppler whose expertise was indispensable to avoid mistakes and provide a scientific base for social-empirical research.

Procedure:

All participants were highly motivated and showed strong enthusiasm during the entire meeting. The written and spoken comments were recorded by a tape recorder to allow a later detailed analysis by Prof. Keppler in order to identify individual motivation and the reasoning behind the mentioned preferences of participants. In addition the first meeting at Stuttgart was recorded by a video camera. To avoid shyness and the feeling of being observed the camera was not installed for the "countryside-group" at Beuron.

Survey

Normally a written survey is carried out with the help of a questionnaire which is sent to a limited number of persons. It was taken into consideration that the readiness for answering the questions only depends on the accompanying letter and the theme of the survey. One of the disadvantages of a written survey is that often there is a very low return flow rate. This fact might result in a falsification of the basic random sample and the elimination of the representativeness of the survey.

To compensate this problem it was decided by the German team and the rest of the FORAM-Partners not to send the survey questionnaires to a limited number of the National population by mail, but to combine the written questionnaire with a brief interview (introduction to theme forest and forestry, information about project and person) asking visitors and inhabitants in one of three German study areas.

The Questionnaire

It was discussed during the FORAM-Meeting in Greece 1997 and also decided there to choose the region Obere Donau (Study Area Upper Danube Valley) for the surveying with the help of a questionnaire. After a long initial period of survey development and deep discussions between Partners the final questionnaire (version no. 8) was well prepared and refined by Prof. Keppler (Stuttgart) following the experience of the first group-discussion.

The questionnaire (German version no.8) includes images and two types of questions:

 
Questionnaire Structure:
0. Cover sheet (Title of Project, name of institute and university, date, location, number of questionnaire, name of interviewer) 

1. Regional Question ("Upper Danube Valley") concerning landscape aesthetics 

Q1: Preferences towards landscape elements 

2. Common Questions regarding forest 

Q2: Cultural importance of forests in Germany 

Q3: Forest functions 

Q4: Attitude towards amount of forests in Germany 

3. Forest Visit 

Q5a: Frequency of forest visits during the year 

Q5b: Recent forest visit 

Q5c: Reasons for not visiting forests more often 

Q6: Activities and other reasons for going into the forests 

4. Forest Aesthetics - Problems and Improvements - individual attitude 

Q7: Feelings during visiting a forest 

Q8: Factors of disturbation during forest visits 

Q9: Improvements for forests 

5. Tree species and Silviculture 

(Questions combined with prototypical images) 

Q10: Preferences towards the following silvicultural methods with regard to arsthetics 

"Kahlschlag", Clear felling system 

"Saumschlag", Strip selection system 

"Schirmschlag", Shelterwood system (uniform) 

"Femelschlag", Irregular Shelterwood system/Group Selection system 

"Plenterung", Single tree Selection system 

Q11: Investigation of German forest issues 

-Tree species composition 

-Form and structure 

-Design of forest edges/mantles 

-Forest interior (forest raods) 

6. Willingness to pay 

Q12: Willingness to pay 

7. Personal Questions 

Q13: Statistical data 
 

The German questionnaire used for the public preference survey (Quest2k.doc)

 

Survey Procedure

The first days of May 1997 were chosen for the survey procedure in the Upper Danube Valley, because the 1st May is a National holiday in Germany which is a very attractive day for touristic tours and outdoor-activities. Followed by a week-end and good weather this date was predestined to be successful with regard to reach a lot of people for the survey in the touristic centre of the Nature Park. Within the selected location 255 persons were answering the questions concerning forest aesthetics, forestry issues and silvicultural management methods in Germany.

Different locations within the region of the Natupark Obere Donau were chosen for the "interviewing" in order to get a great number of respondents.

Some facts of survey organisation:
Date: Thursday 1st - Sunday 4th May 1997 
Interviewing team:  2 FORAM-Team Members 

1 Professional Forester (Bavarian Forest Research Institute) 

2 Research Assistents (Diplom-Forstwirt) 
Locations: Naturparkhaus (exhibition, in-house) 
around the Jaegerhaus (in front of or close to a restaurant) 
Knopfmacherfels (key view point) 
Lochenfels (key view point) 
Café Haertl (restaurant) 
private houses at Beuron 
All respondents were given a small introduction (instead of letter) before filling in the questionnaire. Several images depicting forest scenes and special forestry were shown to each respondent in order to have them evaluated with regard to aesthetics. The answering of the questions and the evaluating of the images was done independently and without any manipulation by the interviewing persons.

To avoid misunderstandings between interviewers and respondents and especially later complications by analysing the collected data, it was important to prepare and train the interviewing team carefully and to discuss difficulties after a test phase of interviews.

Data Analysis

Data analysis of group discussions

For gathering viable results from both group discussions it was of great importance for the German FORAM-Team to involve outside help in conducting the group discussions. Prof. Keppler who is a professional psychologist and an expert in the area of social-empirical research (Keppler Consumer Research Institute at Stuttgart) has already co-operated with our institute at the University of Munich in many research projects. His expertise was of great advantage for the FORAM-Project.

The recorded and written data material - see procedure of group discussions - was analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. All findings were put together in a professional report "Erlebnisqualitäten des Waldes: Ansätze für eine Kategorienbildung zur Ästhetik des Waldes"

Data analysis of public survey

As discussed during the 4th FORAM-Meeting it has been decided by all FORAM-Partners "SPSS" to be the most adequate instrument for entering and analysing the collected data. For that a "SPSS-Course" was to be attended at the "Leibnitz-Rechenzentrum München" which is an institution offering various training programs.

The SPSS Introducing Course started in August 1997 and took three forenoon. The entering of the data is yet to be completed because of the complexity of the questionnaire. Results are expected to be presented in December 1997.

Results

An expertise concerning the two group discussions is available in German language "Erlebnisqualitäten des Waldes: Ansätze für eine Kategorienbildung zur Ästhetik des Waldes". The report contains the following topics: method
description of discussion groups
organisation
time and place categories of forest visitors
experience of aesthetic sense in the Upper Danube Valley
cognitive impressions and emotional effects during forest visit
consequences concerning forestry with regard to human quality "Leitfaden"
detailed description of participants
questionnaire and statistics
written evaluation of 7 slides
written description of the thema "My beautiful forest"

Example:

An interesting issue was the evaluation of different forest images (slides) depicting diverse forest scenes in Germany:

7 slides were shown to the discussion groups which had to be evaluated individually by each person with respect to aesthetics. The results of both groups are as following:

Example: Evaluation of forest images:
Evaluation of Images
Stuttgart
Beuron
average
Plenterwald
1,7
1,9
1,8
Auewald (Broadleaves)
1,8
2,1
1,9
Spruce with beech
2,6
2,1
2,3
Forest mantle
2,8
2,5
2,6
Mixed forest close to nature
3,3
2,2
2,8
Saumschlagwald (winter)
3,4
3,5
3,5
Spruce monoculture
3,9
3,6
3,7
1: best
6: worst
 
See the excel grafic (Dia.xls)