Research team: Catharine Ward Thompson, Susana Alves, Jenny Roe, Peter Aspinall
Keywords: Forestry Commission, woodlands, environmental improvements, open space, baseline survey
The Woods In and Around Towns (WIAT) initiative aims to increase the contribution of woodland to quality of life in Scotland’s urban and post-industrial areas. This project is creating a baseline dataset of people’s attitudes, perceptions and values towards their local open space and woodlands, within selected communities in areas of multiple deprivation in Scotland. This is to provide the baseline against which the impact of WIAT programme investment on target communities, in terms of changes to the quality of their local environment and their attitudes to the WIAT programme and the local environment, can be measured. The project is the first phase of a longitudinal study that will contribute to the overall evaluation of the WIAT programme.