The Willingness of Non-Industrial Private Forest Owners to Enter California's Carbon Offset Market.

Abstract

While non-industrial private forest landowners have a significant amount of forest landholdings in the US, they are underrepresented in the California cap-and-trade market forest offset program. Additional participation could benefit both the market and non-industrial private forest landowners. We developed a mail questionnaire which served as both a survey instrument and outreach tool about the market. Questions covered forest ownership objectives, landowners' future plans for forests, views of climate change, and attitudes and intentions regarding forest carbon offset project development. We sampled from five Northern California counties for a total of 143 usable surveys. Three different groups of landowners were identified based on their management objectives: amenity (including protecting nature and recreation); legacy (passing land to children and/or maintaining a farm or ranch); and income. Landowner objective groups differed on several key variables, particularly related to potential motivations for joining the market, while all landowners expressed concerns about protocol requirements. Regardless of ownership objectives, over half expressed that receiving revenue from their forests would be an important motivator to join, though most were unwilling to satisfy protocol requirements, even after learning of the potential benefits of program participation. Thus, participation appears to be limited by the costly and complex project development process, as well as a lack of landowner awareness. Extending these lessons, we assert that different landowners may approach payment for ecosystem services programs with different needs, awareness, and motivations, which provide important lessons for those who conduct landowner outreach and for PES program designers.