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Forest Owners’ Socio-demographic Characteristics as Predictors of Customer Value: Evidence from Finland

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Abstract

Ageing, urbanization, and decreasing dependence of non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners on forestry income have challenged the industrial timber supply of several developed countries in Europe and the US. NIPF ownership objectives have gradually also become more diverse in Finland, emphasizing the non-timber amenities of forests. The objective of this paper is to build a more in-depth understanding of NIPF owner objectives, and how information on owner attributes could be used in developing and marketing forestry services. The paper reports results from a survey of NIPF owners conducted in Finland in 2011 (n = 557). According to the results of an exploratory factor analysis a four-dimensional structure of NIPF owner objectives exists, illustrating how a traditional monetary value orientation is only one of the four forest ownership motives. In particular, while aesthetic values and biodiversity conservation are key forest ownership motivations for a segment of NIPF owners, these aspects are not yet fully covered by dominant forestry service organizations. The results therefore offer some understanding why currently available service offerings are failing to meet the objectives of some NIPF owners. From the perspective of developing new business models, recognizing customer pressure towards more diversified service offerings would appear to be essential.

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Notes

  1. In Häyrinen et al. (2014), confirmatory factor analysis was also used in this data set to validate the measurement scale, and the use of a similar four-factor solution was justified.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge financial support from the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation Tekes through grants to Projects FP-SERVE and FORTUNE. We also thank for reviewers of our paper for their constructive comments. All remaining errors are our own.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forest Sciences, University of Helsinki, Latokartanonkaari 7, 00014, Helsinki, Finland

    Liina Häyrinen, Osmo Mattila, Sami Berghäll & Anne Toppinen

Authors
  1. Liina Häyrinen
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  2. Osmo Mattila
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  3. Sami Berghäll
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  4. Anne Toppinen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Liina Häyrinen.

Appendices

Appendix 1

See Table 3.

Table 3 Forest ownership objectives
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Appendix 2

See Table 4.

Table 4 Statistical differences between factor score means of different socio-demographic attributes (Tukey post hoc test)
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Häyrinen, L., Mattila, O., Berghäll, S. et al. Forest Owners’ Socio-demographic Characteristics as Predictors of Customer Value: Evidence from Finland. Small-scale Forestry 14, 19–37 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-014-9271-9

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