Look at what they do – a revised approach to communication strategy towards private forest owners

Abstract

Private forest owners in Sweden and other countries are becoming an increasingly heterogeneous group as regards their experience and knowledge of forestry. Over the past decade, a number of studies have been conducted with the aim of describing different aspects of forest owners. However, little attention has been paid to the owners' self-activity and how they learn. With the overall aim of exploring the relationship between self-activity and knowledge to use it as a starting point for new recommendations for planned communication towards forest owners, this study examines the extent and type of the work different categories of private forest owners perform, and from whom or where they learn. An analysis of data from a mail questionnaire and from the Database for Forest Owner Analysis showed that self-activity is common in all categories of owners but more frequent among male and resident forest owners. Forest owners have relatively few knowledge sources. Besides being self-taught, the most common ways of learning are from their fathers and from attending forest days. The study also shows a strong connection between self-activity and self-estimated knowledge of forestry. The recommendation for communication planning is therefore to use the extent and type of self-activity among different groups of forest owners as a point of departure for planning communication strategies.

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

“…Moreover 47% of male forest owners make decisions about forest-related activities by themselves, while only 7% of female owners do so (Mizaraite 2005). The occurrence of self-activity in Swedish family forestry is much more common among male than among female owners (Lidestav and Nordfjell 2005;Häggqvist et al 2014). This is the case in Latvia too, but also the use of service providers for forest management activities are used less often on female-owned estates (Vilkriste 2008).…”

Forest owner is more than her goal: a qualitative typology of Lithuanian owners

“…A bulk of PFO studies, including elaborations of forest owner typologies by their management goals, is conducted with support of surveys using traditional statistical (quantitative) techniques, for recent examples see (Häggqvist et al 2014;Lidestav & Lejon 2012). Traditional survey approach is attractive for several reasons (Bliss & Martin 1989) A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t 5 analytical tools are available, and the survey approach enjoys a high degree of acceptance by the scientific community.…”

Factors Explaining the Interest of Adult Offspring in Succeeding Their Parents as Forest Owners

“…Moreover, Fisher and Burton [41] argued that the breakdown in early childhood socialization, due to changes in agricultural practices has led to less interest among children to succeed their parents. Similar risks are apparently possible for private forest owners as the self-activity level is decreasing [37]. Brandth and Overrein [40] also argued that there has been a change in perception of what good parental practices should be (especially for fathers).…”

“…Bliss and Martin [35], as well as Lähdesmäki and Matilainen [36], found that working with the forest contributes to the identity of being the owner of the forest. Häggqvist et al [37] found a strong relationship between self-activity and forest knowledge among forest owners. Furthermore, in farming this process of creating a self-identity as a farmer through work has been acknowledged.…”