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Factors Hindering Forest Management Among Engaged and Detached Private Forest Owners: Slovenian Stakeholders’ Perceptions

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Abstract

Small-scale properties are the prevailing ownership category in Slovenian private forests. Owners are becoming increasingly diverse with predominant multifunctional management orientation which has led to underutilisation of wood potentials over the past decades. We surveyed forest-related stakeholders (24) to understand their perceptions on factors affecting private forest management. We used their perceptions, as opposed to the actual barriers, to understand what needs to be changed in forest policy. This study is based on the latest (private forest owners) PFOs typology conducted in Slovenia which resulted in types of engaged and detached forest owners. A typology based framework for data collection and analysis was performed using six pre-set categories from operational environment. We followed the Simple Multiple-Attribute Rating Techniques method to evaluate the most important private forest management hindering factors. The results showed that stakeholders perceived only minor differences between owner types according to hindering factors. The psychological factors were perceived as the crucial category separating the two types, suggesting that detached owners are more substantially driven by personal decisions, which follow recent societal changes. The group of economic factors was recognized as the most important category for both types suggesting that forest policy should prioritize profit-oriented management strategies. The results imply that owner-specific forest policy may not be the priority for stakeholders and that the problems of private forest management can be solved with the implementation of innovative and active policy measures, which take into account multifunctional forest management orientation of PFOs, their characteristics and ownership trends.

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Notes

  1. Multi-part questions were used to measure the importance of forest-related values, on 5-point Likert scale ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”. Values-related questions were grouped into three dimensions: environmental, social and production by averaging all questions into each group.

  2. Multi-part questions were used to measure the importance of forest management objectives, on 5-point Likert scale ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”. Objective variables were obtained as the average across all the questions in that objective.

  3. Biotechnical Faculty, Department of Forestry; Biotechnical Faculty, Department for Agriculture; Faculty of Arts, Department of Geography.

  4. The term local priority (in contrast to global) means that the priority has been scaled with other priorities in the same category.

  5. PFOs with less than 10 ha of forests maintain and manage their forests simply for “having a forest” and other non-market relevant purposes (Weiss et al. 2006).

  6. Promotion of the association of PFOs was regulated in the amendment of Forest Act from 2007, in order to adjust with the European Union legislation and its rural development policy.

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Acknowledgements

Authors wish to thank to Pahernik Foundation and Slovenian Research Agency (Postgraduate Research Scholarship) for supporting the publishing of results.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Anton Melik Geographical Institute, Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Gosposka ulica 13, 1000, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Peter Kumer

  2. Department of Forestry and Renewable Forest Resources, Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, Večna pot 83, 1000, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Špela Pezdevšek Malovrh

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Kumer, P., Pezdevšek Malovrh, Š. Factors Hindering Forest Management Among Engaged and Detached Private Forest Owners: Slovenian Stakeholders’ Perceptions. Small-scale Forestry 18, 105–125 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-018-9409-2

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