Abstract
Understanding how non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners gain and share information regarding the management of their property is very important to policy makers, yet our knowledge regarding how and to what degree this information flows over privately owned landscapes is limited. The work described here seeks to address this shortfall. Widely administered surveys with close-ended questions may not adequately capture this information flow within NIPF owner communities. This study used open-ended questions in interviews of clusters of NIPF owners to determine whether and to what extent owners in-fluence each other directly (through conversations or referrals to sources of advice) or indirectly (through observation of management). We obtained data from thirty-four telephone interviews with owners of NIPF properties in the Western Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and analyzed the data using open coding. Roughly half of the forest owners we interviewed were influenced either directly or indirectly by other members of their NIPF communities. Reasons for owning forests (such as privacy, hunting and nature recreation, and economics) also influenced owners’ management behaviors and goals. This peer-to-peer flow of information (whether direct or indirect) has significant implications for how to distribute management and programmatic information throughout NIPF owner communities, and how amenable these communities may be to cooperative or cross-boundary programs to achieve ecosystem and landscapescale goals.
Highlights
More than half of the 751 million acres of forest in the United States is privately owned, 35% by non-industrial private owners (Butler et al, 2005; Butler, 2008)
The mean age of the interviewees was 56.7 years with an average of 3.8 years of post-high school education. This is close to the mean age of Non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners in the western Upper Peninsula, though the mean level of education was higher than the general population in this area as reported by the National Woodland Owner Survey (NWOS)
Consistent with NWOS averages, the new owners we interviewed were less likely to live on their land than the long-term owners, and owners with larger properties were more likely to have a management plan than those with smaller holdings
Summary
More than half of the 751 million acres of forest in the United States is privately owned, 35% by non-industrial private owners (Butler et al, 2005; Butler, 2008). Different forest owners may require different kinds of information (Finley et al, 2006; Gootee et al, 2010), conveyed in different formats (Hujala et al, 2009), from different kinds and numbers of sources (West et al, 1988; Lönnstedt, 1997), depending upon owner characteristics such as age, education, absenteeism, land tenure, and values Large surveys such as the National Woodland Owner Survey (NWOS; Butler et al, 2005), and smaller efforts (e.g., West et al, 1988) have indicated that NIPF owners may get at least as much information and advice on management and voluntary program enrollment from neighbors, friends, and other NIPF-owning peers, as from professional foresters at public agencies and private industry
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