Pest Management in the Landscape/Lawn Maintenance Industry: A Factor Analysis

Abstract

Lawn care and landscape maintenance (LCLM) firms in the Atlanta metro area were surveyed to determine industry pest management practices. Factor analysis is used to determine pest management systems in the LCLM industry. Primary factors include preventive applications, chemical intensive management, growth regulators and traps, beneficial insects, and bio-intensive management. Independently owned and small firms tend to have lower degrees of adoption of integrated pest management (IPM) factors than corporate and large firms. Comparison of pest management factors in the LCLM industry with those in agriculture suggest that similar IPM systems exist in both industries.

Research Question

Integrated pest management (IPM) in agricultural systems has been the focus of much attention in the research community over the past several decades. IPM in the lawn care and landscape maintenance (LCLM) industry has received much less attention. However, the LCLM industry accounts for an ever growing portion of pesticide use. The purposes of this paper are to identify key pest management factors in the LCLM industry, to use those factors to develop an empirical IPM scale to measure progress in IPM adoption, and to determine the level of adoption of those factors by LCLM firms.

Literature Summary

Studies have documented the range of pest management factors used in agricultural systems. Researchers have recognized that farmers tend to adopt components of IPM rather than complete packages. Adoption of IPM can be viewed as occurrring along a spectrum with prevention-based chemical intensive pest management on one end and systems based, bio-intensive pest management on the other. This type of spectrum has been proposed as a means of measuring the degree of adoption of IPM in agricultural production. How well this spectrum characterizes the actual set of IPM systems adopted by the LCLM industry is an empirical question.

Study Description

Pest management practices used by LCLM firms in the Atlanta metro area were obtained through a mail survey. Eighteen pest management indicators were factor analyzed to reveal underlying pest management factors. Adoption indices were constructed for each factor by summing the number of practices within a factor used by a firm and dividing by the total number of practices in the factor. Firms were separated by revenue and ownership class for comparison of factor adoption levels.

Applied Questions

What are the main pest management factors for lawn care and landscape maintenance firms in the Atlanta metro area?

Results of the factor analysis indicate that there are five primary pest management components: preventive applications, chemical intensive management, growth regulators and traps, beneficial insects, and bio-intensive management. These factors represent groupings of pest management practices based on correlations in use by lawn care and landscape maintenance firms. The first two factors are composed of chemically based practices, including preventive and predetermined spray practices, as well as chemically based pest management practices used in conjunction with scouting and economic thresholds. The latter three factors are composed of nonchemical pest control practices, including use of a variety of information sources and biologically based pest control.

Do the LCLM pest management factors reflect an underlying spectrum of pest management?

Yes. Using the five pest management factors, an empirically based LCLM IPM spectrum can be developed (Fig. 1).

Does firm size and ownership type influence adoption of pest management factors?

Yes. Large and corporate backed firms have more complete adoption of pest management factors. This suggests that education and information transfer efforts should focus more on small, independent LCLM fums to improve adoption levels for IPM practices.

Figure 1

Pest management spectrum for lawn care and landscape maintenance firms.