Symbolic interaction and its influence on cooperation between private forest owners

Abstract

Organizations, such as forest management cooperatives (FMCs), are established to support private forest owners to deal with structural and natural challenges that they cannot handle on their own. In 2018, Feil et al. found in a nationwide survey that only 30% of German private forest owners are members of FMCs. This low participation rate of private forest owners in FMCs in Germany poses a problem for the further development of organizations that can better consider the needs of private forest owners and also meet the timber market's long-term requirements for larger quantities of timber as well as become an equal negotiation partner of the sawmill industry. This problem can be attributed to social interactions, which are considered influential for cooperation between private forest owners.This paper aims to highlight different groups of private forest owners in Germany and their cooperation based on social interaction. To do so, it refers to the categories of actor-centered institutionalism (ACI) and complements these with symbolic interactionism. Methodologically, the paper is based on a quantitative online survey of 1007 private forest owners in Germany. The survey itself was prepared by the authors and conducted by the pollster firm forsa, Germany in the period from 14 to 29 July 2020. In addition to standard research topics in forest related research, such as family tradition and income generation, the questionnaire also focused on social interaction. A hierarchical cluster analysis based on the values of a principal component analysis (PCA) was used both to ensure a neutral view on the data and to create heterogeneous groups of private forest owners.Four distinct clusters were defined through the cluster analysis: “actively exchanging”, “perceivers”, “uninterested” and “self-referential”. These clusters differ mainly in relation to their preferred forms of social interaction.It can be concluded that not only communication but also social interaction in the form of symbolic interaction has an influence on forest owners' cooperation with FMCs. For forestry practice, this means that in regions where there are currently no FMC members, new members could be won in the future by creating forest management activities that encourage cooperation with FMCs.