Homeowner preferences for wooded front yards and backyards: Implications for carbon storage

• Homeowners have heterogeneous preferences for more or less wooded yard styles.
• Neatness, backyard privacy and fitting in with the neighborhood are preferred by all.
• Those who prefer more wooded yards more often prefer privacy in the front yard.
• Backyard neatness is less preferred by those who preferred more wooded yards.
• Those who prefer less wooded yards less often prefer shade and wildlife habitat.

This study contributes to understanding of social preferences, norms, and behaviors in residential landscapes that affect planning, design, and management of trees, which store carbon and contribute to mitigating climate change. We investigated southeast Michigan homeowner preferences for different styles of front yards and backyards that were more or less wooded, learning what landscape characteristics they preferred and how their preferences related to their own yard management behavior. We surveyed homeowners, who selected their most preferred front yard and backyard from a series of images and indicated what characteristics were important to their preferences. We developed a homeowner typology based on their stated preferences for more and less wooded front yards and backyards, distinguished each type by landscape characteristics that were most important to homeowners, and tested whether homeowners of each preference type managed their actual yards consistent with type. Our results show that homeowners are heterogeneous in their preferences, identifying different characteristics as important according to type, but that only mowing of their actual yard is consistent with type. We also found that both important characteristics and actual uses of homeowners’ yards varied between front yards and backyards. Both homeowner types and front yard/backyard differences suggest opportunities for planning and maintaining larger urban woodlands on residential lots.