Colorado Residents' Familiarity, Aesthetic Evaluations, and Approval of Forest Management Practices

Northern Hardwood Silviculture: Preferences among Family Forest Owners in the Western Upper Peninsula of Michigan

“…Among landowners and the general public alike, there is a strong affinity for the park-like appearance created by applying thinnings and lighter intensity harvests (Brunson & Reiter, 1996;Brush, 1979;Peterson & Vaske, 2016). The low approval of clearcuts reported by Peterson and Vaske (2017) is also expected in this study.…”

“…Although most respondents were familiar with the term clearcut, it was the method that respondents were least likely to implement. Much like the findings from other forest aesthetic studies familiarity does not typically predict approval (Brunson & Reiter, 1996;Brush, 1979;Peterson & Vaske, 2016). According to the results of the ordinal regression and chi-square analysis, it does appear that the benefits to wildlife species that clearcuts provide may have been important to FFOs who ranked hunting as an important reason for owning forested land, or who indicated that wildlife was an important factor for their likely decision to implement a clearcut.…”

“…Therefore, the effects that Brunson and Reiter experienced in their study may be less likely to occur among FFOs in the WUP who may have more experience with forest management. Peterson and Vaske (2016) investigated Colorado residents' familiarity, aesthetic judgement, and approval of nine common forest management practices. These practices included fire prevention activities such as prescribed fire and fuel breaks, as well as three broad silvicultural treatments; patch cuts, thinnings, and clearcuts.…”

Landowner Acceptability of Silvicultural Treatments to Restore an Open Forest Landscape

“…An overarching concern, however, relates to the intensity of an intervention, including the degree to which existing conditions are altered or the perceived level of risk associated with a treatment [23]. In the context of timber harvesting, studies generally show high acceptability for low intensity silvicultural treatments such as thinning and selective cutting, and smaller clearcuts are seen as more acceptable than larger ones [15,24,25]. Such findings generally parallel similar research on scenic preferences for timber harvest alternatives [26][27][28], though there can be differences between these two types of judgments [10].…”

Risk interdependency, social norms, and wildfire mitigation: a choice experiment

“…Building on this work, future studies should continue to work toward uncovering the pathways through which social effects operate, and teasing apart the effects of risk interdependency and social norms. This could be accomplished in part through richer experimental contexts that more closely mimic real-world settings (e.g., including face to face interactions in laboratory experiments, including both descriptive and injunctive norms messages (Cialdini et al 1991), or using richer visual depictions of mitigated landscapes which may influence acceptability (Peterson and Vaske 2016). In addition, observational studies can attempt to measure the effects of both risk interdependency and social norms by incorporating social network analyses (to assess the effects of peers who may not be physical neighbors, for example) and by measuring respondents' attitudes toward mitigation.…”