Browsing by Subject "political orientation"

Forests play a key role in climate change mitigation. There are different ways in which forests can contribute to both increasing carbon sequestration and reducing emissions. In Finland, forests are largely owned by private forest owners and thus the actions of these forest owners have a great impact on the climate change mitigation potential of forests. Thereby, this study examined the perceptions of Finnish forest owners on the following climate change mitigation strategies in the forest sector: Forest management, More harvest, Less harvest, Wood products, Conservation, Adaptation, and Land use change. Especially, the study focused on “Less intervention” (a combination of three individual strategies), and “Forest management” as strategies and tested how the following hypothesized aspects are associated with the support for these strategies: the prioritized values affecting the choice between climate change mitigation strategies in the forest sector, risk perception of climate change, political orientation, education level, and the size of forest land. The tested hypotheses were derived from the existing literature on theories and empirical findings on the perceptions of citizens and forest owners. The effect of the independent variables on the chosen climate change mitigation strategies was studied through linear regression analysis based on a quantitative survey with 892 responses. Regression models were established separately for both chosen strategies. On average, forest owners supported all climate change mitigation strategies in the forest sector, except Less harvest. Further the results of the linear regression analysis supported all hypotheses to some degree. Perceived risk of climate change emerged as an important measure affecting the support for climate change mitigation strategies in general. Left-right political orientation was found important, where individuals positioned more on the right side of the political spectrum generally supported strategies that have more human intervention in forests. Forest owners’ prioritized values were discovered to significantly affect the support for climate change mitigation strategies in the forest sector, and forest owners who valued biodiversity gave more support towards Less intervention and less support towards Forest management. Forest owners with a smaller property tended to be slightly more supportive towards Less intervention, but in the Forest management model, the effect was not significant. Similarly, the simultaneous effect of education and political orientation was significant in the Less intervention model, indicating that forest owners with a university degree and right-winged political orientation tended to be more supportive towards strategies with more human intervention in forests, compared to forest owners with a university degree and left-winged political orientation. Apart from hypothesized variables, gender was found a significant predictor of support towards strategies, where, on average, women were more likely to support Less intervention, and similarly be more opposing towards Forest management, compared to men. In light of the results, Finnish forest owners tend to be rather conscious about climate change and support on average different climate change mitigation strategies in the forest sector. Nevertheless, private forest owners are a heterogeneous group of people whose preferences vary greatly, and thus policies need to be implemented accordingly.