Private landowners’ preferences for trading forest landscape and recreational values: A choice experiment application in Kuusamo, Finland

Abstract

Although nature-based tourism is increasingly recognized in forest strategies, economic incentives for private landowners supporting the production of amenity values are largely lacking. This study focused on possibilities to enhance the scenic and recreational values of private forests for nature-based tourism in Finland. More specifically, we studied forest owners’ attitudes towards – and willingness to participate in – a Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) initiative called Landscape and Recreation Value Trade. We also investigated the acceptability of forest management alternatives sustaining landscape qualities, the relative importance of different features of Landscape and Recreation Value Trade for landowners, and the magnitude of overall compensation claims of alternative Landscape and Recreation Value Trade models. A choice experiment survey was conducted in Kuusamo, a popular nature-based tourism destination, located in northeastern Finland. The results show that several forest owners were interested in the suggested scheme if economic losses were to be compensated. The landowners’ preferences for Landscape and Recreation Value Trade were somewhat heterogeneous, suggesting that private forest owners in Kuusamo have rather diverse motivations and objectives for their ownership. Owners who stated to have scenic landscapes on their land, and those living outside Kuusamo area, were more willing to join in the suggested mechanism. In general, landowners’ willingness to participate was strongly dependent on the amount of compensation as well as on other terms of the contract, such as the duration and severity of harvesting restrictions. The largest marginal compensation claims were related to long contract durations and the stringent “no harvesting at all” restriction. Given the heterogeneity in landowners’ preferences, a Landscape and Recreation Value Trade model, offering flexibility to join the system, is needed to attract landowners of forests in hotspot locations for tourism that would help in designing a cost-efficient model for practical application.