Public perceptions of acceptance toward afforestation policy in plain area—An illustration of central Taiwan

• Main Authors: Tsai-Jen Chuang, 莊采蓁
• Other Authors: 顏添明
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/fgyzn4

博士 === 國立中興大學 === 森林學系所 === 106 === Increasing plantation area is one of important goals for environmental sustainability and which is global trend. Taiwan government implements plantation policy for a long time. Recently, the government mainly promotes the implementation of afforestation policy in plain area in order to increase green spaces. Previous studies have examined different stakeholders’ opinions toward the policy while rare in the public. However, the benefits of the afforestation in plain area are highly relevant to the people; therefore, integrating public’s opinions toward the policy is very important to the policy-making. This study aimed to address public’s opinions toward afforestation policy in plain area. According to the classification of Taiwan Forestry Bureau (TFB), the afforestation policy contained four land-use types. In order to obtain more comprehensive information, this study compared public’s acceptance toward the targets of the policy for each land types and also compared the same policy target among the four land types. Cognitive hierarchical theory (CHT) was adopted to explore which factors affect public’s acceptance toward the afforestation targets. Public’s basic values (personal values), value orientations (forest values), social trust, benefit and risk perceptions (benefit and risk perceptions toward afforestation in different land types) were used as factors to establish the study framework. The former two were adopted from the CHT and the others referred from the previous studies. Data were collected from the general public of the four counties of central Taiwan. A total of 1,015 valid questionnaires were obtained from 1,067 questionnaires based on an on-site questionnaire survey during April to October in 2017. The results contained public’s acceptance toward the targets of the afforestation policy in different land types and using structural equation modeling (SEM) to explore the factors in predicting public’s acceptance of the targets. Repeated measures analysis of variance was adopted to compare in two aspects, that is, public’s acceptance toward different afforestation targets under the same land-use type and the differences between the four land types within the same target. The difference of public’s acceptance was shown among the afforestation targets (p<0.001), regardless of land-use types. I also found a clear trend, that is, all of the scores higher in the environmental target (3.59-4.16) and lower in the economic target (3.36-3.86). Meanwhile, the rank of scores from high to low showed: abandoned orchards areas (3.86-4.16), the land subsidence areas (3.54-3.91), the heavy metal-polluted lands (3.40-3.84) and the farm lands (3.36-3.60). On the other hand, a total of 16 SEM models resulting from each land type with four were used to predict acceptance of targets. The well fitness showed in all models, whereas, the different pathways might appear among the models. Moreover, the models also verified the direct and indirect relationships between the factors and the acceptance of targets where these relationships might vary with land-use types and the targets. Because the pattern of farm land differed from others, it was carried out to display. Personal values and forest values have greater effect on the afforestation targets of farm land areas than that of the others. Particularly, the public embraced more conservation values or more existence values of forests; they would have lower acceptance toward the environmental target and lower overall acceptance of afforestation on farm lands. Although the factors affecting public’s acceptance toward the targets showed different patterns between the land-use types, the findings also observed that public’s perception of economic and social benefits of afforestation had strong positive effect on their acceptance toward each targets, regardless land-use types. On the contrast, the perception of social risks of afforestation has associated with lower acceptances of the targets. Noticeably, the variable of social trust linked the perceptions of benefit and risk that play a critical role in mediating factors. Overall, this finding implied that public might possess different opinions on the afforestation targets and the land-use types. The study framework based on CHT could verify following SEM model, implying that the result is suitable to my study and could be used to explain and predict public’s acceptance toward policy. These findings might provide concrete information concerning the public’s opinions toward the afforestation policy in different land types.