Tree selection for a virtual urban park: Comparing aided and unaided decision-making to support public engagement in greenspace design

Abstract

To meet urban resilience goals and the needs of growing populations, cities aim to develop multifunctional greenspaces and urban forests. Urban greening is seen to improve the quality of life for residents, contribute significantly to biodiversity conservation and socio-ecological resilience, and meet climate mitigation and adaptation goals. There is also a growing recognition of the importance of involving individuals and communities in the design and planning of greenspace in cities, particularly in the configuration of parks and in identifying the types of vegetation found there. In these contexts, it is increasingly common to engage the public with virtual 3D landscapes, with the ultimate goals of crowdsourcing preferences, knowledge, and patterns of use. There have been few studies to systematically examine how the public interacts with these virtual spaces, and their decision-making needs. Experts have a fluency with a broad range of ecosystem services that flow from urban greenspaces, as well as a familiarity with trees and other landscape elements. This is not the case for the public, who may instead rely on familiar and visually salient landscape attributes. This is in keeping with the concept of constructed preferences, where judgements are formed as they are elicited and are heavily influenced by available information. This study thus compares aided and unaided decision-making by the public in a virtual 3D urban park. Participants were invited to plant trees in park; some participants were provided with a brief description of a key ecosystem function of each tree (along with an illustration of that tree), other participants were only provided the illustration. Three key insights emerge from this research: (i) public tree preferences are sensitive to whether information is provided or withheld, (ii) in the absence of information, easy to evaluate characteristics (i.e., visually salient characteristics) played a large role in tree selection within the virtual urban parks, and (iii) for most participants, and consistent with other studies, aesthetics was the most important attribute guiding tree choice. These insights can support improved public engagement in landscape design and planning, particularly in crowdsourced and virtual settings.