There are an estimated 10.7 million family forest ownerships across the United States who collectively control 36% or 290 million acres of the nation's forestland. The US Department of Agriculture ...Forest Service National Woodland Owner Survey (NWOS) provides information on the characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors of these ownerships. Between 2011 and 2013, 8,576 randomly selected family forest ownerships with at least 10 acres of forestland participated in the NWOS. Results show: amenity values are the dominant reasons for owning; owners tend to be active on their land, but most are not engaged in traditional forestry programs; and owners are relatively old. Although the general ownership patterns and reasons for owning are the same between the 2002-2006 and current iterations of the NWOS, participation in some management activities changed (some increased and some decreased) and the percentage of female primary decisionmakers increased.
•Explores resource professional views on changing land use in New England.•Concerns centred around shifts in private forest landowner values and culture.•Existing incentive programs for private ...landowners were viewed as inadequate.•Proposed solutions included revising incentives and diversifying outreach efforts.
New England is a predominately forested landscape in which 80% of the forest is privately owned and patterns of land use are the result of diverse landowners acting individually in response to shifting social and economic conditions. In aggregate, perspectives of regional stakeholders can help to inform the challenges and opportunities related to achieving sustainable land-use at the landscape scale in regions like New England. We conducted structured interviews with stakeholders—largely resource management professionals—working in fields related to land-use management (n = 57) to elicit their perspectives on the future of New England’s landscape. The responses were analysed using qualitative content analysis and coded in terms of perceived challenges and opportunities for promoting sustainable land-use trajectories amidst conflicting priorities. The stakeholders overwhelmingly viewed ecological and social issues as interconnected rather than as distinct systems. They perceive the central challenges to sustainability to be: lack of funding and government support, increased development pressures, changing landowner demographics, and the difficulty of accounting for aggregate impacts in a dispersed planning context. The reduced ability of landowners to derive market values from their land was an overarching concern, with parcelization, fragmentation, and poorly planned development viewed as having a disproportionate impact on the character of the land and the potential to exacerbate the negative impacts of other drivers such as climate change. Perceived opportunities for promoting sustainable futures include improving the liveability of urban areas and quality of urban planning to encourage more compact forms of development, and realigning monetary incentives to recognize the collective benefits that forested landowners provide.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Abstract
Family forest owners (FFOs) control a plurality of forestland in the United States, and the decisions these landowners make have a profound impact on the landscape. Most research on FFOs ...consists of cross-sectional studies, although many of these recognize the importance of capturing long-term trends to understand whether and how FFO attitudes, behaviors, and general characteristics are changing. We use data from the 2006, 2013, and 2018 iterations of the USDA Forest Service, National Woodland Owner Survey (NWOS), with a bootstrapping approach to identify significant changes across these time periods among FFOs with 4+ hectares of forestland. Total FFO hectares decreased and FFO ownerships trended downward over the study period. A decreasing proportion of FFOs owned farms or homes near their forestland, harvested timber, or received advice. Demographic shifts include an increase in age and education level from 2006 to 2018, and an increase in FFOs of color from 2006 to 2013. Overall, we find a trend towards decreased traditional engagement and management and a slight increase in owning land for its amenity values. Understanding temporal trends in FFO characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors will help policymakers and forestry professionals inform and update their outreach, technical support, and financial assistance programs.
Study Implications: Families and individuals hold more forestland than any other ownership group in the United States. We use nationwide survey data from 2006, 2013, and 2018 to determine whether and how these landowners are changing over time. The total forestland held by FFOs decreased between 2006 and 2018, and there has been a decrease in traditional forest management and engagement, such as through timber harvesting and nearby farm ownership. This study provides insights for policies, programs, and outreach and a foundation for future long-term comparisons of this group.
Abstract
Private nonindustrial forest owners’ intention to safeguard biodiversity in their own forest was studied by applying the theory of planned behavior. The data were collected in a nationwide ...mail survey sent to 3,000 Finnish forest owners (response rate 35%). The impact of attitudes, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control on the intention to safeguard biodiversity was empirically tested by estimating structural equation models (SEM). The empirical estimations supported the theoretical model. The influence of perceived behavioral control was inhibiting on the intention and slightly stronger than the explanatory power of attitude or the subjective norm. External factors had an impact on the explanatory pattern of the intention. The effect of subjective norm increased and the role of attitude decreased with age. Academic education increased the importance of attitudes and decreased the role of normative pressures. In the development of voluntary measures aimed at safeguarding biodiversity, special attention should be paid to the reduction of the obstacles for the implementation perceived by forest owners. Forest owners often perceive important to retain decision-making power for the next generation. Forest owners should be provided with information about the different measures for safeguarding biodiversity and the contract terms.
Study Implications: Forest owners consider active timber production, compensation level, willingness to retain decision-making power for the next generation, and small forest ownership as factors that inhibit their intention to safeguard biodiversity in their own forests. Forest owners’ attitude toward safeguarding forest biodiversity and the normative pressures the reference groups create have a slightly smaller effect on intention. It is important to take the views of forest owners into account when developing voluntary measures for safeguarding biodiversity. It is essential to distribute information to forest owners about the available measures, their requirements, and compensation.
In the USA, there are an estimated 9.6 million families, individuals, trusts, estates, and family partnerships, collectively referred to as family forest owners, who control 110 million ha of ...forestland or 39% of the country’s forests. Between 2000 and 2019, 640 peer-reviewed articles were published that focused on family forest owners in the USA. These articles were published across 95 sources with the Journal of Forestry, Forest Policy and Economics, Small-scale Forestry, and Journal of Extension being the most common. Most articles focused on geographic or participatory subsets of family forest owners with many doing cross-subset comparisons, such as between program participants and non-participants. Quantitative methods, and in particular surveys, were the most common data collection techniques, but qualitative, simulation, and synthesis approaches were also applied. Theoretical frameworks were scant across most studies with behavioral change models being the most common frameworks among those studies that did explicitly include one. Forest management and policies and programs were the most common topics, but the relative frequency of topics changed over time with topics such as forest management decreasing and legacy increasing. Much has been learned about family forest owners, but there is still much that is unknown. Harmonization across studies could help to increase comparisons and allow for drawing of broader conclusions. Continuing to borrow ideas from other fields and stronger incorporation of theoretical frameworks could also help further this scientific field, but it is also important that attention is paid to the implications of the research to ensure it has the greatest possible impact on the threats and challenges facing family forests.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Forest ownership is changing in Europe. Reasons include recent institutional changes in Eastern Europe, changing lifestyles of non-agricultural owners and afforestation. At present, there is little ...comparative analysis across Europe, and the implications that these changes have for forest management and for the fulfilment and redefinition of policy objectives have not been addressed systematically. This paper has been developed in the framework of a European research network on forest ownership change, based on conceptual work, literature reviews and empirical evidence from 28 European countries. It aims to provide an overview of the state of knowledge, to discuss relevant issues and provide conceptual and practical foundations for future research, forest management approaches, and policy making. In particular, it discusses possible approaches for classifying forest ownership types and understandings of “new” forest ownership. One important insight is that the division into public and private forests is not as clear as often assumed and that an additional category of semi-public (or semi-private) forms of forest ownership would be desirable. Another recommendation is that the concepts of “new forest owners” vs. “new forest owner types” should be differentiated more consciously. We observe that, in research and policy practice, the mutual relations between forest ownership structure and policies are often neglected, for instance, how policies may directly and indirectly influence ownership development, and what different ownership categories mean for the fulfilment of policy goals. Finally, we propose that better support should be provided for the development of new, adapted forest management approaches for emerging forest owner types. Forest ownership deserves greater attention in studies dealing with forest policy or forest management.
•We present the state-of-art on forest ownership research and research needs.•We relate forest ownership with policy and innovative forest management.•We discuss concepts and definitions for forest owner types and typologies.•We present overview results from 28 European countries.•We see a need for owner specific policies and new forest management approaches.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
•We interviewed 60 landowners to investigate eight cases of cooperation.•Private landowners made and implemented integrated management decisions.•Shared concern, pre-existing networks, trust, and ...institutions were factors in cooperation.•Our findings were consistent with collective action and social exchange theory.•Network governance may be a suitable model for reducing social risks of cooperation.
The landscape is an ideal spatial extent for managing forests because many ecological processes and disturbances occur on such scales. Moreover, landscape-level decision-making processes can improve the efficiency of forest management, as when many owners of small parcels increase the economy of scale of their operations by jointly hiring labor or selling products. Despite the potential benefits of managing at the landscape level, cooperation on management activities across property boundaries is rare among private landowners and poorly understood. We used a comparative case study approach to explain cooperative management among eight sets of individual private forest landowners in the Pacific Northwest and Upper Midwest, USA. We characterized how private forest owners cooperated on management and the outcomes they associated with cooperating, and we identified factors that influenced cooperation. We investigated whether cooperative management among private landowners may be constrained by social risks and whether formal institutions may be needed to facilitate cooperation. In the cases we investigated, owners jointly planned and implemented integrated management decisions on their collective forest properties. They perceived a number of beneficial social and ecological outcomes of cooperation. The key factors that fostered the emergence and continuity of cooperative management included shared concern, especially about risks to their properties and the health of their forests; pre-existing networks; trust; external expertise and resources; local leadership; and formal institutions. These factors are consistent with collective action and social exchange theory. Our findings shed light on social conditions that foster cooperative landscape management.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
In Lithuania, as in other analyzed countries, greatest attention is concentrated on the protection and monitoring of state forests, while the situation in the private forest sector is quite unclear ...and uncertain. In most European countries, as well as in Lithuania, there are a lack of socio-economic data, and there are no planned forest monitoring methods and permanent programs. We claim that the problem of achieving sustainability in the forest sector, in the case of the estates of the private forest owners, could be partially solved by implementing the monitoring of social and economic indicators. This study proposes the need for the establishment of a social and economic database of private forest owners in Lithuania. In this article, we have carried out a detailed analysis of scientific sources and selected socio-economic indicators to help the adoption of optimal management solutions for sustainability in the private forest sector. To explore the need to establish a social and economic database of private forest owners in Lithuania, we conducted an empirical study by applying the method of semi-structured interview to a group of experts/specialists in the forestry field. Summarizing the results of the research, it can be concluded that the need for socio-economic information about the owners of private forests in Lithuania is obvious, as it would clarify the most pressing problems that forest owners face when farming in their forest estates. This information would also allow the improvement of policy formulation and implementation, the adoption of legal regulations, and the organization of the necessary changes in private forestry. Therefore, it is necessary to establish criteria and indicators that could ensure more sustainable forest management.
Forest management changes with societal change, and it has been debated if economic development in society places material objectives in a less preferable position: it is assumed this is also the ...case as regards forest management. The aims of this study were to propose a theoretical model for empirical studies of objectives and motivations within this field and to depict motivations and objectives of small-scale forest owners in Sweden. Comparative literature studies were undertaken and qualitative methodology was used for the empirical studies. Firstly, to depict general trends among forest owners, interviews with professional foresters were conducted. Secondly, forest owners throughout Sweden were interviewed to compare the results of the interviews with the professional foresters on the motivations and objectives of small-scale forest owners. Within the literature, there were no consistent views on the subjective grounds for owning and managing small-scale forest estates. The proposed theoretical model originated from the cultural concept. Sets of interpretive and normative qualities were seen as underlying peopleâs actions, and such sets were related to basic values. The âobjectivesâ were clustered into groups creating four clusters i.e. âmotivationsâ. The four motivations depicted were: Conservation; Utilities; Amenities and Economic Efficiency. The empirical results highlighted that the objectives and motivations of forest-owners covered a broad field and a move towards conservation interests was indicated. The theoretical model presented here is suggested a suitable tool for both depicting the motivations and objectives of forest owners and for making future comparisons.
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