The role of personal values and personality traits in environmental concern of non-industrial private forest owners in Sweden

Environmental benefits have become priority objectives for the management of forests, including for private forest owners in many countries. Understanding and promoting environmental-friendly private forest management requires a measure of environmental concern of forest owners and knowledge of factors that influence it. Such a measure allows to explore underlying motivations of forest owners to include environmental aspects in their forest management. This in turn helps in developing and implementing effective pro-environmental forestry policies. In this paper, we assess environmental concern in forest management of 226 non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners in Sweden. In particular, we sought to achieve a two-fold objective: a) to quantitatively explore the content and dimensionality of the environmental concern construct of forestry owners and b) to identify the association between environmental concern of forest owners and their personal values and personality traits. A principal factor analysis resulted in a two-dimensional environmental concern construct encompassing: environmental strategy and environmental orientation. Hierarchical seemingly unrelated regressions (SUREG) showed that personal values and personality traits help to explain environmental concern in forest management of NIPF owners. A better understanding of environmental concern of forest owners and its relation with individuals' attributes will help in better designing, framing and targeting of tailor-made interventions to promote environmental considerations in forest management

Access to credit and heterogeneous effects on agricultural technology adoption: Evidence from large rural surveys in Ethiopia

Modern agricultural technologies hold huge potential for increasing productivity and reducing poverty in developing countries. However, adoption levels of these technologies have remained disappointingly low in Africa. This paper analyzes the effect of access to credit on the likelihood of adoption and use intensity of chemical fertilizers using data from large rural surveys in Ethiopia. Using a heteroscedasticity-based identification strategy to address the endogenous nature of access to credit, we find that access to credit has significant positive effects on adoption and intensity of use of chemical fertilizers. However, important heterogeneities are observed. Credit obtained from formal sources is more important for the intensity of use than for the decision to adopt chemical fertilizers. Credit taken with the primary purpose of financing agricultural inputs is more likely to promote adoption of chemical fertilizers than credit taken per se. Furthermore, reported credit effects are larger when estimated against the sample of credit-constrained non-users as compared with the pool of the whole sample of credit non-users. The results remain robust to several sensitivity analyses. Our results yield useful implications for the design, promotion, and targeting of credit services to leverage their effect on adoption of agricultural technologies

Forest plantations’ investments in social services and local infrastructure : an analysis of private, FSC certified and state-owned, non-certified plantations in rural Tanzania

With the rapid expansion of forest plantations worldwide, communities, NGOs and researchers are increasingly expressing their concerns about the outcomes of plantations’ activities for local households. This study investigates the perceptions of local households about forest plantations’ investments in social services and local infrastructure in rural Tanzania. We consider households living in villages adjacent to private, FSC certified forest plantations and households in villages adjacent to a state-owned, non-certified plantation. We use survey data from 338 households to analyze perceived changes in school enrolment, quality of education, and the number and quality of health centers, roads and bridges associated with investments by plantations. We use a mixed method approach and complement the results from a logistic regression model with observations of the size and quality of social services and infrastructure in the villages and with findings from focus group discussions. The results show that households in the villages adjacent to both the private, FSC certified and state-owned, non-certified forest plantations associate the plantations with improved social services and local infrastructure in the study villages. Moreover, we find that the private, FSC certified forest plantations are viewed more favorably than the state-owned, non-certified plantation in terms of their contributions to social services and local infrastructure in the study areas. Richer households tend to perceive the investments of the plantations more favorably than poorer households in the study villages

The role of personal values and personality traits in environmental concern of non-industrial private forest owners in Sweden

Environmental benefits have become priority objectives for the management of forests, including for private forest owners in many countries. Understanding and promoting environmental-friendly private forest management requires a measure of environmental concern of forest owners and knowledge of factors that influence it. Such a measure allows to explore underlying motivations of forest owners to include environmental aspects in their forest management. This in turn helps in developing and implementing effective pro-environmental forestry policies. In this paper, we assess environmental concern in forest management of 226 non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners in Sweden. In particular, we sought to achieve a two-fold objective: a) to quantitatively explore the content and dimensionality of the environmental concern construct of forestry owners and b) to identify the association between environmental concern of forest owners and their personal values and personality traits. A principal factor analysis resulted in a two-dimensional environmental concern construct encompassing: environmental strategy and environmental orientation. Hierarchical seemingly unrelated regressions (SUREG) showed that personal values and personality traits help to explain environmental concern in forest management of NIPF owners. A better understanding of environmental concern of forest owners and its relation with individuals' attributes will help in better designing, framing and targeting of tailor-made interventions to promote environmental considerations in forest management

Forest plantations’ investments in social services and local infrastructure : an analysis of private, FSC certified and state-owned, non-certified plantations in rural Tanzania

With the rapid expansion of forest plantations worldwide, communities, NGOs and researchers are increasingly expressing their concerns about the outcomes of plantations’ activities for local households. This study investigates the perceptions of local households about forest plantations’ investments in social services and local infrastructure in rural Tanzania. We consider households living in villages adjacent to private, FSC certified forest plantations and households in villages adjacent to a state-owned, non-certified plantation. We use survey data from 338 households to analyze perceived changes in school enrolment, quality of education, and the number and quality of health centers, roads and bridges associated with investments by plantations. We use a mixed method approach and complement the results from a logistic regression model with observations of the size and quality of social services and infrastructure in the villages and with findings from focus group discussions. The results show that households in the villages adjacent to both the private, FSC certified and state-owned, non-certified forest plantations associate the plantations with improved social services and local infrastructure in the study villages. Moreover, we find that the private, FSC certified forest plantations are viewed more favorably than the state-owned, non-certified plantation in terms of their contributions to social services and local infrastructure in the study areas. Richer households tend to perceive the investments of the plantations more favorably than poorer households in the study villages.</p