Human management of landscapes is a primary cause of global environmental change. In residential landscapes, homeowners’ yard management choices are important drivers of ecological properties and processes in urban ecosystems. Moreover, at this small scale, characteristics and actions of individuals can be linked directly to ecological characteristics of the property. We know little, however, about what influences residents’ landscaping preferences and management practices, such as maintaining mesic yards (high water-use grass lawns) or xeric yards (low water-use plantings with crushed rock). This research investigates how human cognitive factors, such as personal priorities, cultural values, beliefs and norms, are linked to resultant ecological characteristics of residential landscapes at the household and neighborhood scales in Phoenix, Arizona. Our analyses integrate data from a jointly designed social survey and an extensive observational field survey of yard characteristics conducted at the household scale in four distinct neighborhoods (n = 121). Using factor analyses to group social survey questions regarding residents’ values, we averaged the grouped questions to create composite indices that reliably reflect residents’ values and landscaping priorities. The indices then were tested as predictors for residents’ self-reported landscaping preferences and management practices, as well as landscape characteristics collected in the field survey.
Results/Conclusions
Our findings highlight the significance of human cognitive factors in shaping the ecological structure of residential landscapes. At the individual household scale, residents’ landscaping preferences closely mirrored their actual yard characteristics, or landscape management decisions. Additionally, residents who either preferred desert-like xeric yards or maintained this landscape type prioritized easy yard maintenance and benefits to the environment in their decisions. Generally however, neither core values, such as altruism and selfishness, nor environmental values, such as ecocentric and anthropocentric orientations, impacted residents’ landscaping preferences and management decisions. Values also did not significantly differ among the case study neighborhoods, which differed substantially in abundance and distribution mesic vs. xeric landscapes. Our research demonstrates that individual values alone cannot explain ecological structure of residential landscapes. Instead, perhaps regional or institutional factors, such as legacies of former developer or homeowner decisions, or Homeowners Association regulations, may be more important drivers of residents’ landscaping practices. Understanding the social drivers influencing residents’ landscaping practices will lead to a better understanding of variability of yard structures and the biogeochemical and ecological processes operating at the household and neighborhood scales.
