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Legitimating institutional choices in the forest ownership: building acceptability for jointly owned forests

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Abstract

Recent demographic changes in the forest-owner structure are suspected to have led to the increasing number of owners with no specific objectives for their forests. In addition, the continuous fragmentation of the forest holdings has increased the threat of the passiveness related to forest management. To decrease the tendency towards passiveness, new policy tools and initiatives have been suggested. In the Finnish context, the idea of an investor-based jointly owned forest has been introduced as facilitating the effective utilization of the forest resource. However, collective ownership has faced prejudice and scepticism among private forest owners. In order to expand, the forest owners need to see the idea of jointly owned forests as a socially legitimate. Thus, by adopting Van Leeuwen’s framework for analyzing the legitimation of new social practices, we examine how Finnish forest owners legitimate their participation in jointly owned forests. The qualitative data of the study consist of 20 in-depth interviews with private forest owners who have joined a jointly owned forest. Our study contributes to the recent discussion on jointly owned forests. We show how a change in the type of ownership results in moral, authoritative and rational justifications over the decision while simultaneously renewing the identity of the forest owner. Accordingly, we suggest that forest ownership is not only driven by rational prospects, but the moral and emotional nature of ownership should be better taken into account at the policy level and in structural designs when discussing the promotion of new types of forest ownership.

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Notes

  1. The JOF, consisting of 85 partners, was established in 2011. The forest area was approximately 1400 ha. In general, the sizes of the Finnish JOFs vary from approximately those under 20–90,000 ha (Matilainen 2009). In 2015, the average size of JOFs in Finland was 1874 ha (Metsäkeskus 2015).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ruralia Institute, University of Helsinki, Kampusranta 9 C, 60320, Seinajoki, Finland

    Merja Lähdesmäki & Anne Matilainen

  2. School of Business and Economics, University of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35, 40014, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Marjo Siltaoja

Authors
  1. Merja Lähdesmäki
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  2. Anne Matilainen
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  3. Marjo Siltaoja
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Correspondence to Merja Lähdesmäki.

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Communicated by Martin Moog.

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Lähdesmäki, M., Matilainen, A. & Siltaoja, M. Legitimating institutional choices in the forest ownership: building acceptability for jointly owned forests. Eur J Forest Res 135, 1055–1069 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10342-016-0993-4

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