Summary

Overview

The English Tree Planting Programme will contribute to the Government’s commitment to increase tree planting to 30,000 hectares per year by 2025. Alongside environmental and economic benefits, there will be social benefits associated with this. Therefore, this planting programme provides a valuable opportunity to assess public attitudes to new planting and the social benefits associated with it, including how this may vary across diverse populations. It is also an opportunity to help us better understand why some people can’t or don’t benefit from woodland creation and expansion and what we can do about it.

This research piloted a longitudinal social research approach. This is research which assesses how attitudes, benefits and barriers change over time in relation to new tree planting. We looked at this from an individual and a community perspective.

This project is part of the Nature for Climate Fund.

Research Objectives

  1. Identify and develop connections with forest/woodland sites and communities to study over time;
  2. Explore attitudes, motivations, actions, barriers and benefits linked to new woodland creation and expansion (new planting) for diverse communities.
  3. Develop and test a proof-of-concept* for longitudinal research to study how attitudes, motivations, actions, barriers and benefits for communities local to new planting change over time.

*proof-of-concept refers to establishing through testing whether such longitudinal research is feasible, what it would contribute, and how it could be achieved.

Research Questions

  1. What do local community members who have visited the site think about the intervention (new planting and expansion of woodland) and how it has come about?
  2. What do local community members who have not visited the site (but are aware of the intervention) think about it and how it has come about?
  3. What impact has the intervention had on local community members who visit/engage with the site?
  4. What impact, if any, has the intervention had on local community members who have not visited (but are aware of the intervention)?
  5. How do we best capture the above change in attitudes, motivations, actions, barriers and benefits linked to woodland creation and expansion for diverse communities over time?
  6. What lessons can we take from the above to inform such interventions to help them improve provision of benefits and to maximise access/engagement with such sites (where this is an aim) and minimise negative impacts (on site and visitor)?

Findings and Recommendations

  • Overwhelmingly, the studied communities believe local tree planting and the creation of new woodlands is a good thing.
  • New woodland can provide unique experiences and opportunities for visitors (e.g. related to sensory experience and opportunities to build connections), but non-visitors can benefit from these woodlands too (e.g. building pride in place).
  • People who visit their local new woodlands more frequently have better mental wellbeing (correlational). Mental wellbeing may be enhanced by:
    • The unique sensory experiences and learning opportunities afforded by new woodlands;
    • Observing the rate of (positive) change in newly planted woodlands, providing cognitive benefits; and,
    • Opportunities to develop relationships with growing trees.
  • Respondents with the highest level of reported anxiety were those who never visit the woodlands.
  • The more frequently people visit the new woodlands the more they value them.
  • Local communities believe the benefits to wildlife from new woodlands is important.
  • The majority of visitor and non-visitor respondents believed that new woodland confers a degree of protection from (built) over-development of their local area.
  • Most visitors to new woodlands feel a sense of personal responsibility towards them, which may be related to opportunities to develop relationships with growing trees.
  • Mixed methods longitudinal research is a useful way of exploring people’s relationships with their local natural environments and how these change over time. Qualitative methods which utilise retrospective and prospective methods are able to reveal unique insights into the role of lived experience in how people relate to and are impacted by local nature interventions.
  • We have developed and tested an innovative mixed methods longitudinal methodological approach for application in future research into this topic and any research which considers how the relationship between local communities and local natural sites changes over time and how time influences the attitudes and benefits that can be obtained.

Latest Update

In scoping this work we produced a literature review and developed a theoretical framework.

From this we decided to take a mixed methods approach:

Questionnaires

Focusing on communities within 30 mins walk of the new planting sites, we designed and tested a survey questionnaire with this hyper-local population. This approach follows engagement and benefits from the new planting sites at a community scale.

The first wave of testing utilised and compared face to face and Computer Aided Telephone Interview methods. Using the learning from this first wave we designed a second wave, delivered late in 2024.

Interviews

Focusing on individuals who visit their local new planting site, we used a qualitative approach to understand how their engagement with the site and related benefits has changed over time.

Given the short funding window we utilised a case biography approach and repeat interviews to expand our frame of reference. We have completed the qualitative data collection, having conducted three waves of interviews.

Analysing the interview data after each wave enabled us to adapt the approach and allowed us to feed into wave 2 of the quantitative survey questionnaire approach.

Outputs

A range of outputs from the project are now available to download and explore. These include a comprehensive Technical Report produced for Defra (Evid4), which provides a detailed account of the research conducted throughout the project.

To complement the report, an interactive StoryMap has been created, offering an accessible summary of the qualitative findings. You can view it here: How do people experience creation of new, local woodlands?.

We also provide an accompanying methodology report, which provides more details on the innovative mixed methods approach to longitudinal research”.

The project, along with its funding, concluded in March 2025.

Downloads

Document thumbnail

International Association People-Environment Studies (IAPS) Conference 2024: presentation slides

In July 2024, the novel methodology utilised for the qualitative part of this project was presented at the IAPS 24 conference in Barcelona, Spain. The PowerPoint slides from this presentation are available here.

Pptx File | 5.36 MB

TWF-16 Technical Report - EVID4

A detailed account of the research conducted throughout the project

PDF | 8.41 MB

Methodology report - Mapping benefits new woodland

Methodology report - Mapping the benefits of new woodland

PDF | 0.79 MB

Related research

Publications

  • Beesley, J., Brockett, B., Colley, E., Hall, C., Karlsdóttir, B., Murrell, G., 2025. How do people experience creation of new, local woodlands? (StoryMap). Available at: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/5c713d215e20490cbb959a1d40cb276c
  • Karlsdottir, B., 2023. Qualitative Longitudinal Methods for Forest Social Science: A Review (in publication).
  • O’Brien, L., FitzGerald, O., Bursnell, M., Ambrose-Oji, B., and Edwards, D., 2021. England Tree Planting Programme: Experimental Plots. A scoping report for social research (internal document).

Funding & Partners