Planning on a wider scale – Swedish forest owners' preferences for landscape policy attributes

Bostedt, Göran; Zabel von Felten, Astrid Mirjam; Ekvall, Hans (2019). Planning on a wider scale – Swedish forest owners' preferences for landscape policy attributes Forest Policy and Economics, 104, pp. 170-181. Elsevier 10.1016/j.forpol.2019.04.013

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A tax-fund system has been proposed to advance Swedish forest conservation. We present a choice experiment with Swedish private forest owners on preferences for attributes of a tax-fund system. Focusing on three aspects: (i) freedom to choose set-asides, (ii) equity issues, and (iii) frequency of nature inventories, we find two groups of forest owners. The first is opposed to interventions that could curtail liberty and oppose frequent nature inventories, while a smaller group would derive positive utility from jointly deciding on the location of set-asides with society. Both groups have a preference for changing the current tax-base to soil productivity or timber volume. The tax-base chosen together with the modalities of re-distributing the funds will determine the program's efficiency. The paper concludes that a tax-fund system could indeed be a way forward but would need to be designed in a participatory manner to reconcile forest owners, forest industry representatives, and conservationists.

Item Type:	Journal Article (Original Article)
Division/Institute:	School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences HAFL > Multifunctional Forest Management
Name:	Bostedt, Göran; Zabel von Felten, Astrid Mirjam and Ekvall, Hans
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences S Agriculture > SD Forestry
ISSN:	13899341
Publisher:	Elsevier
Language:	English
Submitter:	Nadine Werndli
Date Deposited:	03 Sep 2019 08:36
Last Modified:	08 Mar 2023 11:03
Publisher DOI:	10.1016/j.forpol.2019.04.013
ARBOR DOI:	10.24451/arbor.7857
URI:	https://arbor.bfh.ch/id/eprint/7857