Heimo Karppinen

The Values and Objectives of Private Forest Owners and Their Influence on Forestry Behaviour: The Implications for Entrepreneurship

There are many factors that determine what forestry activities forest owners carry out in their forest properties and that influence whether forest owners engage in entrepreneurial activity. This paper explores whether the values and objectives of forest owners influence their forestry behaviour and their engagement in entrepreneurial activity. This is done through a review of the literature on private forest owners’ typologies based on owners’ objectives. The review reveals that typologies typically divide forest owners into two main groups. The primary objective of the first group of owners is production (of wood and non-wood goods and services) usually, although not exclusively, so as to generate economic activity. The primary objective of the second group is consumption (of wood and non-wood goods and services). There is a tacit assumption in the studies reviewed that goals and objectives do influence forestry behaviour but few studies have actually assessed whether this is the case. The general finding is that forest owners whose objectives are timber production and who are business-oriented are more likely to manage and harvest their stands. No research focusing on the link between owners’ objective and wider entrepreneurial activity in forests was found.

New forest owners and owners-to-be: apples and oranges?

This literature review focuses on two groups of landowners in the US and Finland: those current family owners who have recently become forest owners, with a relatively short duration of ownership, and private individuals who can be expected to become forest owners in the future are compared. The former group is called “new owners,” and the latter “future owners,” respectively. This study aims to find what can be concluded about future owners from studies of new owners based on the assumption that new owners are interpreted to represent future owners in these studies. The data consists of eight studies conducted after the mid 90s.The literature analysis reveals that studies on current owners with short-term experience as forest owners might suggest some developments in ownership structure and service needs, and potentially confirm some forecast trends. Examples of these generation-bound findings, which can probably be generalized across future owners, are new owners’ higher level of education and higher likelihood of living in urban areas. Findings concerning certain behavioral patterns or structural features should be regarded cautiously. Former studies suggest that new owners are quite active harvesters. New forest owners are younger, and younger owners seem to cut more than older owners. However, conclusions concerning future owners’ timber supply behavior are certainly different if they are based on the assumption of an age cohort effect as opposed to a life-cycle effect. Qualitative studies on future owners cannot reveal future owner and holding characteristics or behavioral patterns, but they can give insight on the often generation-bound values and objectives of forest ownership.

Gender in European forest ownership and management: reflections on women as “New forest owners”

ABSTRACT The group of female forest owners is growing across Europe and currently estimated to be about 30% of all private owners. This new category of forest owner merits a closer look. By introducing a gender perspective across three different research frameworks, this paper substantiates that gender matters in forest ownership, management, operations, and the understandings of these three aspects. Where gender-disaggregated data is available, and gender is assessed as an empirical variable, we find the differences in numbers between male and female forest owners in most countries. By adding the concept of gender as a relational and structuralizing category, we demonstrate that gender structures affect, for example, actual behavior of female and male forest owners and the self-evaluation of forestry competence. Further, when considering gender as a meaning category we explore how meaning produces behavior and behavior produces meanings, and how both shape institutions and natural and artificial matter. Here forestry competence is the applied example. To further increase the knowledge on new forest owners, we recommend (i) fellow researchers in the field to assume that gender matters and design their empirical studies accordingly and (ii) policy-makers to guarantee access to gender-disaggregated data in official registers and statistics.

International influences in the revision of Finnish Forest Act

ABSTRACT Major revisions of the Finnish Forest Act were carried out in 1994–1996 and 2010–2013. The need for revision emerged from societal changes and changes in the forest sector’s operational environment that related to the globalisation of markets and influences of international policies. This study analysed the influences of global and European Union forest and environmental policies on the revision of the Forest Act by combining advocacy coalition framework with the four pathways of influence framework introduced by Bernstein and Cashore. The results show that the three identified advocacy coalitions, namely Forestry administration, Private forestry and Environmental coalition remained rather stable over the two revision processes from 1990s to 2010s. The importance of the different pathways of international influence differed between the coalitions. Private forestry and Forestry administration coalitions, which represented forestry paradigm, stressed market-related arguments, whereas Environmental coalition representing environmental paradigm mainly referred to international legally binding rules and non-legally binding initiatives. The argumentation of the actors indicated that international rules and international norms and discourse were regarded to be as equally important.

Interactions Between Forest Owners and Their Forests

More than half of the forest land in Europe is privately owned, and ownership structure is known to have implications for management, production of timber and other forest products and services that support the transformation towards a green economy. This chapter provides examples of how we can gain knowledge about the forest and forest owner/user relationship from a structural point of view. Sweden is taken as an example because of the accessibility of continuous data on forest conditions, ownership and demographic data. It is concluded that the pace of change in ownership structure and forest management behaviour is slow. Further, neither the ongoing migration, urbanisation, ageing population nor the increased proportion of women seems to reduce the willingness to manage and harvest.

Individual Forest Owners in Context

In this chapter, changes that have taken place on an overarching level in society, such as globalisation, supranational agencies, privatisation and restitution, are discussed from the forest owners’ perspective. The forces influencing forest owners and forest ownership as described in Chap. 2 in this volume are scrutinised and interpreted here on a micro level. Urbanisation, economic restructuring, demographic change and new ownership constellations are both drivers and consequences of changes in lifestyles, forest owner identity, place attachment and attitudes to the forest resource.

Forest owners’ views on storing carbon in their forests

ABSTRACT Given the high percentage of private forest ownership in Finland, family forest owners have an important role in mitigating climate change. The study aims to explore Finnish family forest owners’ perceptions on climate change and their opinions on increasing carbon storage in their forests through new kinds of management activities and policy instruments. The data consists of thematic face-to-face interviews among Helsinki metropolitan area forest owners (n = 15). These city-dwellers were expected to be more aware of and more interested in climate change mitigation than forest owners at large. Forests as carbon fluxes appear to be a familiar concept to most of the forest owners, but carbon storage in their own forests was a new idea. Four types concerning forest owners’ view on storing carbon in their forests could be identified. The Pioneer utilizes forestland versatilely and has already adopted practices to mitigate climate change. The Potential is concerned about climate change, but this is not seen in forest practices applied. The Resistant is generally aware of climate change but sees a fundamental contradiction between carbon storing and wood production. The Indifferent Owner believes that climate change is taking place but does not acknowledge a relation between climate change and the owner’s forests.

Is there a new European forest owner? : The institutional context

This chapter describes how the forest owner can be seen as differently constructed in different European countries depending on, amongst other things, whether it has been necessary to re-create the forest owner and forest ownership tradition following restitution, forest or agricultural traditions, and the historical role of the small-scale forest owner. Patterns of international and national policy change, the role of supporting infrastructure such as forest owner organisations, and patterns of inheritance have also been important in constructing the forest owner. In that, the chapter contextualises and clarifies much of the case focus in other chapters—it also clarifies how different forest systems, forest owner structures, and thereby potentially also the role of forest in rural development and rural studies may vary in different countries.

Metsänomistajien käsitykset metsätalouden kannattavuudesta ja sen mittaamisesta

Tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan kvalitatiivisen tutkimuksen menetelmin yksityismetsänomistajien käsityksiä metsätalouden kannattavuudesta ja erityisesti heidän käyttämiään tapoja oman tilansa kannattavuuden arvioimiseksi. Tutkimusaineisto kerättiin haastattelemalla 19 metsänomistajaa metsänhoitoyhdistys Päijät-Hämeen alueelta teemahaastattelumenetelmällä. Haastatellut metsänomistajat mainitsivat runsaasti erilaisia kannattavuuden mittareiksi tulkittavia arviointitapoja, joiden perusteella kannattavuuteen suhtautumisessa voitiin erottaa kuusi perustyyppiä: absoluuttiset, suhteuttajat, tulojen turvaajat, riskin tiedostajat, arvon mittaajat ja markkinattomat. Haastateltujen mielestä kannattavuuteen vaikuttivat erityisesti metsänhoitotöiden tekeminen, kustannukset sekä raakapuun hinta. Myös metsän kasvu ja rakenne, hakkuun ajoitus, metsän arvon kehitys, toiminnan systemaattisuus sekä aktiivinen puunmyynti ja omatoimisuus mainittiin usein. Yritystoiminnassa yleisesti käytettyjä liiketaloudellisia kannattavuusmittoja (esim. kassavirta, liiketulos, sijoitetun pääoman tuottoprosentti) mainittiin harvoin. Käytetyt kannattavuuden arviointitavat ja käsitykset siihen vaikuttavista tekijöistä olivat silti paljolti perusteltavissa olevia ja oikeansuuntaisia. Haastatellut metsänomistajat myös ymmärtävät kannattavuuteen vaikuttavat tekijät pitkälti samalla tavoin kuin metsäpolitiikan laatijat, vaikka kannattavuustavoitteet vaihtelevat. Kaikkiaan lähtökohta tilatason kannattavuuden parantamiselle markkinaehtoisten palvelujen, julkisrahoitteisen neuvonnan ja politiikan muun keinovalikoiman avulla on varsin hyvä.