Understanding Public Risk Concerns: An investigation into the social perception, interpretation and communication of tree health risks

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The UK's trees, woods and forests are currently threatened by a range of invasive pests and pathogens, many of them introduced through the international trade in plants and trees. While the risk posed by these introductions to wildllife, accessible spaces and cherished landscapes have been known to about in offical circles for some time, it was arguably not until the introduction of the ash dieback pathogen to the UK in autumn 2012 that the public became much more widely involved. Extensive media coverage, social media commentary and the growing involvement of communities in efforts to monitor the spread of this disease and to detect the arrival of other pests and pathogens, all seem to suggest that tree health and its future safeguarding have become issues of public concern. This shift in the debate is an important development which needs to be harnessed by government, its agencies and various stakeholders in order to build support for stronger measures to prevent further introductions and to effectively manage those that are now estbalished. Despite this, we currently know little about the true nature of this concern and the extent to which it is likely to be sustained once media reporting of particular outbreaks declines. We know even less about the extent to which more risk-aware members of the public will be motivated to change their behaviour (for instance by buying plants only from accredited sources or reducing their demand for instant woody landscapes requiring the importation of large trees from outside the UK). This research will look at three recent outbreaks for which we have documentary and other evidence of public concern in order to assess the extent to which different sorts of people known to have had some sort of exposure to, or engagement with, our case study outbreaks (volunteers, garden and woodland visitors, local residents) currently recognise pest and disease risks to tree health, whether there is any evidence that their risk perceptions have changed over the course of outbreaks by being exposed to media coverage and risk communications from government and others and how far this makes them more or less willing to make behavioural changes.