Forestry has significant impacts on the quality of the forest landscape for recreation and naturebased
tourism. In Finland, the rapid growth of nature-based tourism has expanded outdoor
recreation activities from protected areas into timber production forests both in private and
public lands, particularly so in northern Finland. This has created a demand for modifying
current forest management regimes, especially regeneration practices aimed mainly at timber
production. As landscape and recreational benefits mainly represent direct and indirect use
values of forests, it is relevant to study the possibilities for creating a direct compensation
mechanism between the potential buyers (tourists or tourism entrepreneurs) and providers
(forest owners) for such services.
In this paper we first describe the main requirements for developing a Landscape and
Recreational Values Trading scheme in Finland. Second, we present preliminary results from a
recent choice experiment study that investigates foreign and domestic tourists’ demand for and
willingness to pay for enhanced forest amenities in private forests of the Ruka-Kuusamo area in
northeastern Finland.
The results support the idea that tourists are willing to pay for selected improvements in the
quality of outdoor recreation environments. Both foreign and domestic tourists were willing to
pay for improvements in the quality of the forest landscape, in terms of a less frequent
occurrence of clear-cutting and site preparation areas along the routes, as well as for increased
biodiversity. Foreign tourists’ willingness to pay was significantly higher than domestic
tourists’. Neither group would be willing to pay for extended outdoor recreation routes or
increased carbon sequestration, even though reductions in these services might mean a welfare
loss
