Browsing by Author "Paajanen, Tiina Pauliina"

Forests are vital for biodiversity and climate change mitigation through carbon storage and sequestration. In Finland, forests are the most important renewable natural resource and forestry is significant for the national economy. In addition, forests are the largest carbon sinks of the land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector and provide remarkable amount of biodiversity. The Finnish non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners have significant potential to supply ecosystem services and have substantial opportunities regarding the forests, as 60% of the total area of forest land is privately owned. The NIPF owners may enhance the state of biodiversity and carbon sequestration by participating in the forest conservation programs. The regulations and inclusion of the LULUCF sector in the climate targets of the European Union (EU) and a 30% conservation target of land in the EU Biodiversity Directive are intensifying the pressure on further development of conservation programs. Hence, it is important to understand the behavior of the NIPF owners to motivate the program participation. The aim of the thesis is to get insight into the Finnish NIPF owners’ participation behavior in permanent forest conservation programs by using the choice experiment (CE) method. A novel conservation program is being planned in Finland and this survey processes it for the NIPF owners by using a survey questionnaire. The survey questionnaire was targeted to 5,010 NIPF owners and the overall response rate was 11.7%. The study provides analysis on specific non-participant group of protesters, attribute preferences of the conservation program as well as estimates of the willingness to accept (WTA) compensation for program participation. The forest conservation program is described with four attributes being the payment for biodiversity; payment for carbon sequestration; conduction of non-timber businesses and eligibility of the forest area. The sources behind preference heterogeneity regarding the conduction of non-timber businesses and eligibility of the forest area are examined using interactions in the econometric model. The results reveal that a significant share (77%) of serial non-participants are identified as protesters and should be excluded from the WTA estimates. Several socio-economic and attitudinal characteristics were found to statistically significantly influence on protest behavior. The probability to protest increases with e.g. older age, pensioners, female gender and renters for hunting club. Additionally, the protest behavior depends on a number of stated attitudinal statements. Using a binary logit model, the model estimates show that the WTA for program participation is considerably higher when protesters are included, being 16,032 €/ha and respectively 5,641 €/ha, when protesters are excluded. The results regarding the preferences reveal attitudinal and socio-economic aspects affecting statistically significantly on the program attribute of the eligibility of forest area. According to the analyses, the possibility to conduct non-timber businesses is rather irrelevant for the respondents. In addition, there are a few attitudinal factors that influence the preferences of the conduction of non-timber businesses which are statistically significant. However, none of the socio-economic factors regarding the preferences of the attribute are statistically significant. To our knowledge, this is the first study that aims to explain the sources behind protest behaviour as well as to investigate the conduction of non-timber businesses, in the context of permanent forest conservation program. The results provide novel information about protesters and preferences of program attributes of forest management requirements and conduction of non-timber businesses. The results may be useful for the development and targeting of voluntary forest policies and incentives as well as for the business development of organizations that provide services for the NIPF owners. Further, the results help recognizing protesters more easily and reducing protest behavior. To conclude, further studies on the objectives of protests in the context of permanent forest conservation program could be valuable. In addition, further examination on individual attribute level WTAs, could be useful to reveal detailed information of the program attributes of conduction of non-timber businesses and required management activities.