Losing our lakes: an assessment of the human dimensions of lakeshore landowner shoreland management

Abstract

The fragility of shorelines and the impact of residential development on habitat and water quality led to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resource's interest in promoting native vegetative buffers. First, I used the Integrative Model (IM) (Fishbein & Yzer, 2003) to evaluate lakeshore homeowners' attitudes, norms and self-efficacy for restoring a native vegetative buffer. Five belief evaluations (decrease maintenance &#946; = .05, increase water quality &#946; = .058, be attractive &#946; = .103, impede recreation &#946; = .046, and create privacy &#946; = -.028 one self-efficacy evaluation (ability to keep up with maintenance &#946; = .23), and three normative influences (family &#946; = -.097, friends &#946; = .051 and Minnesota DNR &#946; = .065) were significant predictors of intention (R2 = .36). Secondly, I used the Theory of Normative Social Behavior (TNSB) (Rimal and Real, 2005) as an alternate model and compared the results with the IM (Fishbein & Yzer 2003). My findings indicated that the IM (R2 = .241) had a greater explanation of variance, when compared to the TNSB, and that a greater amount of the variance was explained by the inclusion of descriptive norms, group ID and injunctive norms (R2 = .323). Finally, I sought to connect risk theory with behavioral theory and propose a framework for doing so. I used a case study of Minnesota shoreland landowners with native vegetative buffers for integrating risk and behavioral theory to segment audiences. My findings showed that 22.5% of survey respondents reported having a vegetative buffer on their shoreland and 10% of respondents had removed native vegetation in the past. I did not find a significant difference between the attitudes towards buffers of those that have removed vegetation and those that have not. However, the findings showed that having a negative attitude towards buffers increased one's odds of not having a native vegetative buffer by 2 ½ times. The analysis also showed that evaluation of buffers significantly predicted respondents' attitudes towards buffers (R 2 =.22, F[2, 11] = 8.69, p < .001). Compared to respondents without native vegetative buffers, the beliefs that buffers create an attractive shore (&#946; = -.143, p = .019), create habitat (&#946; = .32, p < .001), and create privacy (&#946; = .146, p = .020) were predictive of attitude towards buffers for respondents that have buffers.