Forest owner willingness to pay for a forest property plan may reduce public expenditures for forest planning

Abstract

Fully publicly funded forest planning systems with no individual forest property planning are facing budget cuts and are of limited effectiveness in private forests. A cost-sharing planning instrument that might improve private forest management while providing public budget relief is the forest property plan (FPP). We explored the market for the FPP among private forest owners in Slovenia and estimated the financial implications of adapting the current planning system. We conducted 548 face-to-face interviews with randomly selected private forest owners about their attitudes toward and their willingness to pay (WTP) for the FPP. Of the respondents, 55 % considered the FPP to be a usable instrument, and 34 % would pay for it. The suggested amounts per decade ranged from 5 € to 1500 € with a mean of 135.99 € or 28.31 €/ha. Heckit regression revealed that the primary supporters of the FPP are younger, better educated non-farmers with larger properties and good contacts with the district forester. Aggregating the stated WTP amount to forest owner population, we estimated that on average 17–57 % of the current public budget expenditures for private forest planning-related tasks could be saved annually, depending on the tasks included and the aggregation approach.