How do contemporary Great British attitudes to urban trees vary between locality, individuals and communities with different socio-demographic backgrounds? Forest Research aims to investigate this through a rapid evidence review, a national questionnaire and a series of focus groups.

This page summarises Forest Research’s findings on people’s perceptions and expectations of the public forest estate (PFE) managed by the Forestry Commission.

This review provides evidence of preferences for artificial infrastructure and facilities, and other natural features (alongside trees) that different people favour in different treescapes. Evidence is drawn from 41 international studies from 2002-2022.

This review aims to answer the question “what are the public perspectives of woodland creation, expansion, management and maintenance?” (where woodland is taken to refer to trees in any location and context). Using a combination of structured search strings and key word searches, the search process uncovered 81 relevant publications from 15 countries, published between 1996 and 2021 (inclusive). Given the policy ambitions for tree planting and woodland expansion across Great Britain, from the United Kingdom (UK), Welsh and Scottish Governments, the findings from this review are timely. The findings provide valuable evidence of possible public reactions to new planting, afforestation and changes to management, and identify gaps in the evidence where further work is required.

This review summarises the available economic literature on barriers and enabling factors affecting the ability of specific publics to access woodlands. In particular, distance to woodland, income, socioeconomic variables, health and disability are analysed as factors affecting individuals’ frequency of visits to woodlands and willingness to pay (WTP) for woodland recreation.