Browsing by Author "Suomala, Tuuli"

Bioeconomy is a concept that aims to provide sustainable solutions for economic growth by utilizing renewable natural resources. In Finland, the forest-based bioeconomy forms the base for bioeconomy. The Finnish Bioeconomy Strategy by the Ministry of Employment and the Economy has set ambitious targets regarding employment, output and innovative products and services. However, to date these solutions still remain by large in the theoretical level and the overall sustainability of bioeconomy is questioned by stakeholders. Urbanization is a world-wide phenomenon and also in Finland the biggest cities are expected to grow whilst the country-side becomes less inhabited. Thus, the importance of urban citizens becomes increasingly important in the implementation of forest-based bioeconomy, as they are the future consumers of biobased products and practices. Thereby understanding urban citizens’ perceptions, level of knowledge and opinions regarding the emerging bioeconomy practices is of fundamental importance. This thesis aims to provide insights into the topic with the research questions “what are the worldviews through which urban citizens understand the forest-based bioeconomy?” Furthermore, this thesis aims to provide insights into the question, “how do these worldviews affect the urban citizens’ perceptions of the forest-based bioeconomy?” These worldviews are screened through the Integrative Worldview Framework (IWF) to explain and understand the underlying latent elements of perceptions and acceptance. Additionally, this thesis contributes to a European-wide research network aiming to understand the regional disparities of forest-based bioeconomy perceptions and policies. To answer these questions, a quantitative survey was conducted in Helsinki city center in December 2018 and January 2019. The survey included 34 claims regarding wooden multistory buildings, forest carbon storage and forest-based bioeconomy. With a randomized approach, 206 responses were gathered in total. The statistical methods include descriptive statistics, crosstabulations and exploratory factor analysis and were done using the SPSS 25 Programme. The results proved to be positive and encouraging for the Finnish forest-based bioeconomy. Four worldview factors were detected: Utilitarian, Biocentric, Anti-bioeconomy, and Anthropocentric. Nearly 59% of the respondents perceived to be familiar with the meaning of forest-based bioeconomy and even more with both wooden multistory buildings (WMC) and forest carbon storage. Additionally, forest-based bioeconomy was associated with positive attributes such as generating new jobs and wellbeing.