Understanding private forest owners’ conceptualisation of forest management : Evidence from a survey in seven European countries

Acknowledgements This paper is written as a part of Cost Action FP1201, Forest Land Ownership Changes in Europe: Significance for Management and Policy (FACESMAP). Laura Bouriaud thanks the Romanian Agency UEFISCDI for helping finance this research through the project PN-II-RU-TE-2014-4-0017. Philippe Deuffic and Elodie Brahic thank Centre National de la Propriete Forestiere (CNPF). The authors are also grateful to the people involved in data collection in the seven European countries. The authors thank the three anonymous reviewers for their useful comments that helped to improve the article.Peer reviewedPostprin

Perceptions of ownership among new forest owners : A qualitative study in European context

Private forest owners possess a major part of Europe's forests. Therefore, their behaviour plays a significant role in the development and management of European forest resources. At the same time, forest owners' values and objectives are becoming more versatile. There is a need for further understanding of elements affecting forest owners' management behaviour. One aspect of potential impact is how forest ownership is perceived by the forest owners themselves. Understanding how they experience the ownership, especially on the psychological level, can provide new insights into forest owners' management behaviour and aid in planning better services to meet their needs. This paper aims to describe the new NIPF owners' perceptions of forest ownership by qualitative analyses drawn from 23 in-depth interviews covering different contextual settings in Europe. The theory of psychological ownership is used as a theoretical background. The aim is to examine, how psychological ownership is expressed and the ownership feelings are manifested in different forest owning contexts. The results illustrate what kind of ownership values new forest owners set for their forests and discuss how these affect their forest management behavior. At the same time the paper illustrate the potential of the social science approach in forest ownership research.Peer reviewe

What influences European private forest owners’ affinity for subsidies?

We acknowledge the funding from the whole team from FACESMAP FPS COST Action FP1201. Also VJ was supported by the Czech National Agency for Agricultural Research (NAZV) under the contract QJ1530032.Peer reviewedPostprin

Two decades of forest-related legislation changes in European countries analysed from a property rights perspective

In the last two decades, attention on forests and ownership rights has increased in different domains of international policy, particularly in relation to achieving the global sustainable development goals. This paper looks at the changes in forest-specific legislation applicable to regular productive forests, across 28 European countries. We compare the legal framework applicable in the mid-1990s with that applicable in 2015, using the Property Rights Index in Forestry (PRIF) to measure changes across time and space. The paper shows that forest owners in most western European countries already had high decision-making power in the mid-1990s, following deregulation trends from the 1980s; and for the next two decades, distribution of rights remained largely stable. For these countries, the content and direction of changes indicate that the main pressure on forest-focused legislation comes from environmental discourses (e.g. biodiversity and climate change policies). In contrast, former socialist countries in the mid-1990s gave lower decision-making powers to forest owners than in any of the Western Europe countries; over the next 20 years these show remarkable changes in management, exclusion and withdrawal rights. As a result of these changes, there is no longer a clear line between western and former socialist countries with respect to the national governance systems used to address private forest ownership. Nevertheless, with the exception of Baltic countries which have moved towards the western forest governance system, most of the former socialist countries still maintain a state-centred approach in private forest management. Overall, most of the changes we identified in the last two decades across Europe were recorded in the categories of management rights and exclusion rights. These changes reflect the general trend in European forest policies to expand and reinforce the landowners' individual rights, while preserving minimal rights for other categories of forest users; and to promote the use of financial instruments when targeting policy goals related to the environmental discourse

Communication campaigns to engage (non-traditional) forest owners: A European perspective

In Europe, private forest owners play an important role in achieving sustainability goals, such as those set by the European Green Deal. Efficient communication and coordination with these actors is therefore central. However, ongoing structural changes in forest ownership have in many cases silenced traditional communication channels, especially those involving owners of small forests. Their economic performance is often negligible at an individual level, yet collectively their forests play a pivotal role in a context of increasing demand for wood products. In this article, we analyse and compare forest campaigns in nine European countries. Specifically, we assess one-way and two-way communication models applying different techniques to engage (non-traditional) forest owners. Our analysis of 34 campaigns shows that (i) one-way communication models are still more widely used in the forest sector to engage non-traditional forest owners than two-way communication models; (ii) one-way communication aims at informing and is effective for short-term awareness raising, while two-way communication aims at persuading and is essential to trigger forest management activities over the long-term, (iii) interactive learning tools can play a crucial role for reaching and engaging (nontraditional) forest owners. We further conclude that campaigns could be improved by having 1) joint campaigns with public and private actors, 2) convincing narratives developed based on a good understanding of forest owners' motivations, 3) adapting the timing of campaigns to windows of opportunities and 4) developing intermediary associations (e. g. non-traditional forest owner associations) as connectors and trust builders between different actors as they play a crucial role in providing information to forest owners and supporting their engagement

How do stakeholders working on the forest-water nexus perceive payments for ecosystem services?

Nowadays, great emphasis is placed on the relationship between forest and water because forests are considered as substantial sources of many water ecosystem services. The aim of this paper is to analyze the stakeholder opinions towards the relationship between forests and water and the potential development of water-related payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes. The study is developed in the context of COST Action CA15206–PESFOR-W (Forests for Water) aimed at synthesizing current knowledge about the PES schemes across Europe. The stakeholder opinions were mapped out using a structured questionnaire consisting of 20 questions divided into four thematic sections. The data were collected through an online survey. The results showed opinions of 142 stakeholders from 23 countries, mainly from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean Basin. In order to analyze the collected data, the stakeholders were grouped in buyers, sellers, intermediaries, and knowledge providers. The survey results indicated that the most important category of water ecosystem services according to our sample of stakeholders is regulating services followed by provisioning services. Further findings pointed out the highest importance that shared values and direct changes in land management can have when designing water-related PES schemes. The role of public authorities and collective collaboration of different stakeholders, with emphasis on local and expert knowledge, are also identified as of crucial importance. The results show that stakeholder opinions can serve as a starting point when designing PES schemes

How Do Stakeholders Working on the Forest-Water Nexus Perceive Payments for Ecosystem Services?

Nowadays, great emphasis is placed on the relationship between forest and water because forests are considered as substantial sources of many water ecosystem services. The aim of this paper is to analyze the stakeholder opinions towards the relationship between forests and water and the potential development of water-related payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes. The study is developed in the context of COST Action CA15206-PESFOR-W (Forests for Water) aimed at synthesizing current knowledge about the PES schemes across Europe. The stakeholder opinions were mapped out using a structured questionnaire consisting of 20 questions divided into four thematic sections. The data were collected through an online survey. The results showed opinions of 142 stakeholders from 23 countries, mainly from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean Basin. In order to analyze the collected data, the stakeholders were grouped in buyers, sellers, intermediaries, and knowledge providers. The survey results indicated that the most important category of water ecosystem services according to our sample of stakeholders is regulating services followed by provisioning services. Further findings pointed out the highest importance that shared values and direct changes in land management can have when designing water-related PES schemes. The role of public authorities and collective collaboration of different stakeholders, with emphasis on local and expert knowledge, are also identified as of crucial importance. The results show that stakeholder opinions can serve as a starting point when designing PES schemes