Developing the persona method to increase the commitment of non-industrial private forest owners in French forest policy priorities

Abstract

In Europe, 60% of the forest area is privately owned, with a significant proportion of nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) being highly fragmented with, in particular, low intensity forest management. Numerous typologies have therefore been developed to provide detailed guidance to policy makers for the design of policy instruments to involve these owners in forest management approaches. However, these policy instruments fail to involve all categories of owners and there is no method made by and with people locally in charge of policy implementation to increase the commitment of NIPF owners. The main objective of this study is to adapt the persona method, which is a central user-centered design tool, to design typologies of NIPF owners as future users of policy instruments. We have designed our personas in the Vosges territory (France), in the context of the main French forest policy objective of increasing timber harvesting and NIPF sustainable management. Our results designed eight types of personas as well as a six-part composition of the persona sheet. The main interest is to provide a general methodology to forest policy and forest managers based on rigorous concepts of usercentered design processes and co-creation, to implement operational tools for NIFP management. Finally, both future developments and methodological limitations are discussed in a global research perspective.