Abstract
Although wind power is regarded as a sustainable way to produce electrical energy, wind turbines may cause harmful effects locally. A possible solution is to reduce the effects through forest management practices, for example leaving forest stands uncut as landscape shields to hide the turbines and stop them from spoiling the scenery. Using data from an online survey of landowners, we investigated whether voluntary mechanisms could encourage forest owners to change their forest management practices near wind farms to minimize the harmful effects. More precisely, we analyzed forest owners' willingness to participate in an initiative involving payment for ecosystem services called Landscape Value Trade (LVT) and studied the related compensation claims in southwestern Finland. We explained willingness to participate and the claims made with the characteristics of the landowners or their holding and with attitudinal variables. According to our results, 73.6% of the respondents would possibly or certainly participate in the mechanism. The average annual compensation requirement in this study was €298 per hectare. In addition, we found that low dependence on forestry and forest-related income tended to increase interest in participation in the LVT initiative and reduce the compensation claims. An important result related to the cost-effective application of the mechanism, is that the more interested the respondents were in cooperation with the LVT initiative the less compensation they would claim. Thus, the voluntary nature of the LVT initiative simultaneously acted as a cost-reducing element. The results could help in detecting some of the key features of the supply side of LVT initiatives.
Highlights
Compared to the use of fossil and biofuels, wind power is generally regarded as a sustainable way to produce electrical energy due to the possibility it provides to reduce carbon dioxide emissions into the at mosphere and help prevent climate change
Interest increased if other family members than the husband or wife or the responsible person in a co-ownership arrange ment made forest management decisions (OMEMBER), or if the re spondent’s level of education was higher (EDUC)
We found that only 29.5% of the respondents were expressly inter ested in participating in Landscape Value Trade (LVT) initiatives, which is quite a small per centage
Summary
Compared to the use of fossil and biofuels, wind power is generally regarded as a sustainable way to produce electrical energy due to the possibility it provides to reduce carbon dioxide emissions into the at mosphere and help prevent climate change. Investments in wind power are expected to increase in the future (Huttunen, 2017), which will lead to wind parks being located closer to residential buildings and villages than currently, where they will be strongly present in the visual landscape of local people. Wind power is globally seen as environmentally friendly, wind turbines may cause harmful effects on a local level (Groothuis et al, 2008). Tall wind turbines near homes, holiday homes, or outdoor recreation areas may visually disturb the scenery. The shadows from the towers or the shadow flicker of the turbine blades may disturb people. In the building of wind turbines global and national environmental benefits come into conflict with some of the local environmental drawbacks (Warren et al, 2005)
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