The Role of Visualisations in Eliciting Attitudes to Sustainable Forestry, and the Attitudes Elicited

Abstract

Forests provide timber and other ecosystem services but are under pressure of deforestation and degradation through extraction of products. Sustainable forestry is the management of forests for timber and other products in a way that provides a stable wood supply without negative economic, social and environmental effects. Managing forests for the sustainable yield of timber has been studied and practised for hundreds of years, however forestry has more recently been affected by changing concerns especially about environmental sustainability which can exceed the concerns for economic and at times even social sustainability. In developed countries, the general public are increasingly aware of environmental quality as well as global and local risk, increasingly express a preference for multi-functional forests, and are prepared to oppose the practice of forestry. Hence, understanding people’s attitudes to sustainable forestry is important. Visualisations are one potential tool to assist in the understanding of attitudes. They are effective at conveying messages quickly and are used in, for example, marketing to elicit responses but have only very rarely been used in the complex area of sustainable forestry. Visualisation techniques are being developed continuously, providing new opportunities for visualising sustainable forestry. This thesis asks three questions about the role of visualisations in eliciting attitudes to sustainable forestry: • Is it possible to visualise sustainable forestry? • Can visualisations be used to elicit attitudes about sustainable forestry? • What is elicited about attitudes to sustainable forestry? The case study used for the research was New Zealand forestry. It has an active forestry sector and participates in a number of international initiatives that support sustainable forestry. Wood is harvested from almost only exotic plantations, thus it was possible to focus on production forests. A research design to test the questions was created by adapting three visualisation frameworks: the technique framework (comprising data visualisation, software visualisation, knowledge visualisation, and perception and design visualisation), the viewers' frames of reference (comprising design, negotiation and analytical frames), and a framework of criteria and indicators for sustainable forestry. These were used to guide the design of new visualisations for sustainable forestry and create a matrix of visualisation types. The visualisation design process included the application of visualisation techniques not commonly found in the New Zealand forestry sector. Example visualisations were developed from the fields of: visualising meaning, scientific visualisations (geovisualisations), visualisations for sustainability reporting, temporal visualisations, comprehensive exploratory visualisations, and landscape visualisations. New visualisation software was developed to produce dynamic visualisations for the complexity of sustainable forestry. The visualisations were assessed for their contribution to the elicitation of attitudes using a mixed methods approach to gain the most value from both quantitative and qualitative responses. The assessments found that visualisations for sustainable forestry are possible and they are effective at eliciting attitudes to this topic. The study highlighted a multiplicity of values and meanings associated with sustainable forestry and the role that visualisations have in clarifying these meanings. The diversity of findings ranged from functional and measurable, to principles and value systems. For example, some considered sustainable forestry only related to forest managers, whereas others considered forestry was not sustainable by definition. People considered global sustainable forestry to be achievable, while local forestry should be aspirational and may be, or even should be, dominated by one of the three themes of economic, environmental or social sustainability rather than balanced evenly. Trust in the practice of forestry, even when certified by third parties, can be difficult to achieve. I analysed people’s sustainability ratings of landscapes that combined land cover types (native forests; planted forests; horticulture/viticulture; pasture) with land use types (single and multiple combinations of land use; limited and large amounts of infrastructure; production activities; food production visible; visible damage; scenic setting). The comparisons showed perceptions of differences in sustainability for different combinations of land uses and land covers. An important reasoning for the ratings were the presence of ‘cues of care’ such as fencing of waterways which were considered to signify care for the land and hence indicating a more sustainable land use. A scenic backdrop to a landscape also resulted in a higher sustainability rating. The results of this study showed that people had complex expectations of forestry, irrespective of whether or not these expectations were specifically targeted toward sustainability. No correlation was found between people’s attitudes to sustainable forestry and their type of involvement in forestry. Key findings from the use of this visualisation approach to elicit attitudes were: Abstract visualisations were found to be slightly more preferred than realism based images and acted as visual boundary objects by conveying a core meaning while also allowing for sufficient flexibility in interpretations that made them meaningful to different people. The type of image-evaluation responses given in the survey were correlated with the type of frame of reference of the visualisation that they were responding to. This showed that visualisation preferences consistently aligned with a specific framework rather than, for example, a person’s educational or professional background. The recommendation from this result was that when designing a visualisation, incorporating aspects of each frame enhances the levels of acceptability and accessibility. An example design type that can achieve this is infographics; this research contributes to the substantiation of why this design type is popular among viewers. The findings are of interest to practitioners in the fields of sustainable forestry, visual design, and the elicitation of attitudes using visualisations. Recommendations for further research include further explorations of the viewers’ frames of reference such as the strength with which people associate themselves to a particular frame, and whether frame preferences are equally likely or whether one is more or less common.