Segmenting Landowners of Shandong, China Based on Their Attitudes towards Forest Certification

Abstract

Forest certification is considered a viable market-based policy instrument to promote forest sustainability. It has an important role of play in meeting the objective of modern forestry development in China, which is to sustain ecological and environmental benefits of forests. To understand differences in attitudes, opinions, and interests in forest certification, this study segmented respondents of a landowner's survey in Shandong, China based on their level of interest in participating in forest certification under different program requirements. Multivariate cluster analysis revealed three distinct groups: likely-, potential-, and unlikely-landowners. We further examined the heterogeneity of these groups in terms of their demographics, ownership characteristics, management objectives, and perceived benefits and challenges of adopting forest certification. The results suggested the necessity of differentiating landowners in formulating and designing specific motivation-based incentives and tailoring outreach efforts and communication strategies to improve their interests in forest certification. Findings will be useful and interesting to forest policymakers interested in promoting forest certification among landowners in China and other countries facing similar circumstances.

Cell Wall Bulking by Maleic Anhydride for Wood Durability Improvement

“…The weight loss rate is defined as Formula (6): WLR (%) = 100 × (Wb -Wa) / Wa (6) where Wa and Wb are the weight of the wood sample before and after fungus attack, respectively.…”

“…This is of great significance for promoting the sustainable development in society [1][2][3][4][5]. However, the drawbacks of wood, such as dimensional instability when exposed to wet conditions and biological degradation when exposed to decay fungi, limit its long-term utilization [6][7][8][9][10]. Although its biodegradable nature is beneficial, from the perspective of sustainable development wood still needs to be modified to obtain better durability when exposed to the above harsh environments [11][12][13][14][15].…”

Understanding Sustainable Forest Management Certification in Slovakia: Forest Owners’ Perception of Expectations, Benefits and Problems

“…Increased costs of certification are, thus, one of the main barriers for the adoption of forest certification for forest owners as well as for the chain of custody (CoC) level [11,43,[52][53][54][55]. The unit cost is relatively higher for small compared to large forest owners [56]; however, certified forest owners believe that certification benefits exceed costs [42,56].…”

Assessments of Landowners’ Willingness to Accept Compensation for Participating in Forest Certification in Shandong, China

“…Regarding the research of forest certification among landowners, the existing literature mostly focuses on the research areas of identifying landowners' concerns and challenges to participate in forest certification as well as investigating their perceptions and attitudes towards certification programs. For example, one key concern for landowners to have their property certified was the costs associated with certification [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. To be specific, Tian et al [17] reported that increased management costs was significantly and negatively associated with landowners' willingness to participate in forest certification in Shandong Province, China.…”

“…To be specific, Tian et al [17] reported that increased management costs was significantly and negatively associated with landowners' willingness to participate in forest certification in Shandong Province, China. Studies also showed that the stringent requirements of certification program such as requirement of a written management plan [8,10,17,18] was another landowner's concern for seeking forest certification. For example, Kilgore et al, [19] and Leahy et al [12] reported that the requirement of a forest management plan was a barrier for family landowners to adopt forest certification with a survey conducted in Minnesota.…”