“Experience is a great teacher”: citizens’ reception of a proposal for the implementation of green infrastructure as stormwater management technology

Abstract

This paper examines citizen receptivity to green infrastructure (GI) development in three neighborhoods in Syracuse, New York. Data from 208 surveyed residents were statistically assessed to determine levels of environmental knowledge (EK) about and stated willingness to implement rain barrels, rain gardens, trees, porous pavements, and curbside extensions. Respondents had high levels of EK about GI as a measure for stormwater control and strong stated willingness to implement GI measures. There were no statistically significant relationships between either EK or stated willingness to implement, and sociodemographic variables, with the exception of age. However, there was a statistically significant positive relationship between EK and stated willingness to implement GI. This article, grounded in environmental psychology, argues that there may be nuances in the type of EK that can explain the observed relationships. Specifically, knowledge obtained from a common shared experience of combined sewer overflows flooding, rather than EK gained through formal education, explains the results. It is within this framework, that policy-makers must make decisions about GI implementation.

Keywords:

• behavioral intentions
• environmental knowledge
• green infrastructure
• stormwater management
• stated willingness to implement

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank members of the Partnership for Onondaga Creek for their assistance in developing this research project and for providing access to their community. Additionally, I would like to thank the following persons who assisted with data collection and analysis for this paper: participants of the Onondaga Earth Corps, undergraduate students from Syracuse University, SUNY ESF and Colgate University, especially Melissa Britton, Yasmin Mannan, and Jia Zheng. Finally, special thanks to all the anonymous and known reviewers, especially Hubert Devonish and Robert Kinlocke for all their invaluable comments on the manuscript.

Notes

1. GI “reduce[s] stormwater through infiltration, evapotranspiration, capture, and reuse of stormwater on individual lots, [that are] distributed throughout the urban watershed” (De Sousa, Montalto, & Spatari, 2012, p. 902).

2. A sewershed refers to all the land area that is drained by a network of sewer pipelines. These pipelines lead to a single confluence point either such as a wastewater treatment plant.

3. The sample size was calculated using census tract data of total housing units with a 95% confidence interval and a 7–10% precision. The targeted total ranged from 99 to 200.

4. Each respondent was asked whether or not they were the head of the household. The assumption here was that head of households would have been the decision-makers.

5. Variables were collapsed into suitable categories to reduce the percent of cell expected frequencies to less than five.

6. This is a pseudo R² that is reported given the nature of logistic regression.