Landowner Behavior Research Articles

Landowner Behavior: Influence of an Increase in Perceived Risk on the Expected Loss of Early Plantation Harvests

Landowner Behavior: Influence of an Increase in Perceived Risk on the Expected Loss of Early Plantation Harvests

Efforts to Prevent Land Changes Due to Natural Disasters in Tridi Village Malang City

To ensure environmental sustainability and mitigate the risk of natural disasters such as flooding, the Malang City government has imposed a ban on residential development along the banks of the Brantas River through Malang City Regional Regulation No. 6 Year 2022. This study examines the measures adopted by the Malang City government to regulate the spatial layout of settlements in Kampung Tridi and prevent land degradation due to natural disasters, similar to the approach taken in Taman Bendung Tirto. Using Socio-Legal methodology, the study explores the perceptions and legal behaviors of riverside landowners and the government's strategies to protect the land. The findings of this study reveal that the Malang City government's efforts mainly focus on enforcing strict zoning in Kampung Tridi to comply with spatial regulations. This abstract is intended to provide a comprehensive overview of the study, highlighting the importance of the legal framework in urban planning and environmental protection

Understanding Landowner Education Needs for Invasive Disease Prevention and Restoration Planting in Southern Oregon

Abstract Understanding the knowledge and behavior of nonindustrial private forest landowners towards Port-Orford cedar (POC) root disease (Phytophthora lateralis), sudden oak death (Phytophthora ramorum), and disease-resistant seedlings can help target effective education and outreach programs. We surveyed two counties in Southern Oregon to gain knowledge about these pathogens, disease-resistant seedlings, landowner behavior, and landowner preferences regarding planting disease-resistant seedlings. Amenity-based management objectives were more associated with planting disease-resistant POC. Respondents were more likely to plant disease-resistant conifers than hardwoods. Disease-resistant planting preferences were associated with years owned and acres of ownership. Designing targeted education and outreach programs will be necessary to achieve broad scale adoption of disease management and restoration practices. Study implications: We present results from a survey of nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) landowners in two counties in Southern Oregon to determine general landowner characteristics and knowledge of two nonnative diseases, Port-Orford cedar root disease, caused by Phytophthora lateralis, and sudden oak death, caused by Phytophthora ramorum. NIPF landowners play meaningful roles in invasive disease management: recognizing and reporting symptoms of nonnative plant diseases with the objective of early detection and control, implementing management actions to help mitigate disease spread, and planting disease-resistant seedlings during restoration efforts. Understanding landowner knowledge about diseases is important for engaging them in insect and disease mitigation.

By the Book: Examining California’s Private Forest Regulations from the Perspectives of Family Forest Landowners

Private forest land policies in the U.S. differ by state and range from regulatory to non-regulatory. The state of California has a highly regulatory policy system to ensure sustainable forest management, and the state’s family forest landowners, who hold 20% of the state’s forests, navigate this regulatory system to achieve their management objectives. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 33 family forest landowners to better understand their perceptions of state forest policies, including the policies’ efficacy and how they impact landowner behavior. We found that participants voiced general acceptance of California’s forest policies, though they described significant concerns because of financial burdens and regulatory uncertainty. They had nuanced views regarding how the policies protect public trust resources and private property rights, suggesting that landowners’ public responsibilities and private rights are not always at odds.

Private landowners perceive positive impacts to their land stewardship following involvement in a conservation research program

AbstractConservation research programs can encourage conservation of biodiversity of working landscapes by influencing the conservation behaviors of private landowners who participate in the program. However, specific conservation behavior outcomes following landowner participation in a conservation research program, as well as the drivers that influence their engagement in these behaviors, remain unclear. We interviewed landowners that had provided property access to a Smithsonian conservation research program to conduct ecological research. We investigated (a) how landowners perceived participation in a conservation research program influenced their engagement in conservation behaviors and (b) how landowners perceived characteristics of the program influenced their engagement in conservation behaviors. We found that interviewees' perceived participation in a conservation research program influenced their engagement in land stewardship behaviors more commonly than social environmentalism or environmental citizenship behaviors. Interviewees perceived that program characteristics such as events, on‐site survey interactions, and landowner reports most frequently influenced their engagement in conservation behaviors. Our findings suggest that conservation programs may increase their influence on landowner conservation behavior engagement through fostering direct interactions among landowners, their peers, and researchers; training staff and citizen scientists in effective science communication skills; and tailoring program communications to their target audience.

Including forestry in an emissions trading scheme: Lessons from New Zealand

The forestry sector has a crucial role to play in mitigating climate change. Given the share of global emissions covered by emissions trading is expected to rise, there is a need to understand how emissions trading might drive behavior change in the forestry sector. To explore this, we analyze the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS) − the only system in the world with symmetrical incentives that reward forest owners who afforest and make liable those who deforest. In theory, these incentives should drive net carbon dioxide removals in the forestry sector, but the sectoral response has proven complex. We evaluate the NZ ETS policies that directly affect forestry and the sectoral response to these policies by analyzing trends in deforestation, afforestation, and participation over 2008 to 2022. Our findings indicate that the forestry sector, and the NZ ETS participants within it, have responded rationally to emissions pricing over time. However, multiple factors such as complex participation requirements, extended periods of policy uncertainty, and weak emissions price signals (particularly over 2011–2016) have likely restricted the effectiveness of the NZ ETS in changing forestry outcomes over much of its operating life. The Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Act, 2020 reformed forestry and other provisions in the NZ ETS to address demonstrated shortcomings, improve policy predictability, and incentivize more ambitious mitigation action in line with Aotearoa New Zealand’s targets. However, the signaling of further changes to NZ ETS forestry policy in 2022 has created new uncertainty for market participants. Despite past challenges, the sector’s dramatic response to rising emissions prices in recent years demonstrates the NZ ETS is changing landowner behavior to produce net forestry removals. The NZ ETS remains a unique and strong model from which other nations can gain insights in how to design and operate emissions trading systems to harness mitigation potential from the forestry sector and help meet their emission reduction targets.

State-level forestry policies across the US: Discourses reflecting the tension between private property rights and public trust resources

Policies impacting forest management on privately-owned lands demonstrate remarkable variety across the United States, with each state emphasizing different approaches to balancing private property rights with the protection of public trust resources. Though private property rights are historically paramount in the US, previous researchers have identified a variety of policy approaches on private forest lands, from regulatory to non-regulatory. We expand on these categories through a discourse analysis of state-produced documents (including legislation, rules, and best management practices manuals). Through this analysis, we create a typology of categories that express assumptions about landowner behavior and the appropriate role of state intervention. The typology identifies four discourse categories used to varying degrees within each state: landowner stewardship, forestry expert stewardship, science-bureaucracy, and participatory conservation. This typology allows for comparison of policy approaches and comparison across resources and jurisdictions.

‘Real’ regulation and property relations on agricultural estates: Reducing opportunities for new entrants to agriculture

A decline in the availability of opportunities for new entrants to agriculture is a recognised consequence of the agricultural restructuring process. Under the Common Agricultural Policy, various support schemes have attempted to address such concerns, with limited success. A number of these schemes focus on the provision of agricultural property rights for new entrants, but there appears to be limited justification for this. This paper argues the new entrant problem is as much about progression and exit as it is about entry, with such considerations generally not included in support frameworks. To develop this argument, the paper re-engages with the concept of ‘real’ regulation to examine rural property relationships on agricultural estates held by local authorities and county councils within England and Wales (i.e. the county farms estate). ‘Real’ regulation influences property-owner behaviour in three-ways: regulation of land occupancy; regulation of landowner behaviour; and, regulation of land use. These three regimes allow property owners to determine management strategies based on economic, social and environmental considerations. The flexibility afforded by ‘real’ regulation, and in particular, the regulation of land occupancy, and of landowner behaviour, allows property-owners the option to shift focus between these regimes, especially when faced with unfavourable market conditions. Analysis of different estate management strategies (consolidation, partial disinvestment, disinvestment), shows how this severely restricts the provision of property rights to new entrants and progressing tenants, as property-owners look to protect their interests. For these reasons, current new entrant support networks have limited success, irrespective of the political approach driving them.

Disposição de proprietários rurais à adoção de práticas voluntárias e compulsórias de restauração florestal na região do médio Rio Doce - MG

Abstract The maintenance of hydrological conditions in rural watersheds depends on the behavior of rural landowners regarding land use and vegetation cover protection. We analyzed the willingness of farmers from the Rio Doce basin to adopt voluntary forest restoration strategies and to bring their lands into compliance with Federal Law 12.651/2012. We applied a questionnaire to 30 landowners in the municipality of Governador Valadares and the surrounding region. The results indicate that 86% of the farmers acknowledge maintaining vegetation cover as highly important, highlighting benefits such as reduced erosion (86%) and increased discharge in springs (73%). Technical assistance for productivity (29.6%), donation of materials (22.2%) and economic incentives (22.2%) were identified as factors that increase the motivation of farmers to implement such practices. Agroforestry Systems were the most preferred modality (50%). The long-term presence of rural assistance organizations and the trust between them and landowners explain the dissemination of environmental notions and pro-conservation attitudes.

Invasion landscapes as social‐ecological systems: Role of social factors in invasive plant species control

Abstract Biological invasions are a major threat to biodiversity and human well‐being. Scientists and environmental managers typically seek ecological solutions to the biological invasion problem. However, micro‐scale social factors, such as landowner attitudes and social interactions that underlie landowners’ willingness to control invasive species, may provide an important lever for controlling biological invasions. Yet, compared to our ecological understanding of invasion dynamics, little is known about the effect of micro‐level social factors on the efficiency of invasive species control. Here, we determine how landowners’ micro‐scale social factors contribute to the efficiency of invasive species control, that is, landowners’ ability to contain or eradicate invasion at landscape level. First, we survey landowners across New Zealand to gain an understanding of the social factors that affect their willingness and ability to control invasive conifers. Then, we disentangle how micro‐scale social factors influence landscape‐level patterns of conifer invasion using a social‐ecological simulation model. We estimate the influence of social factors individually and through their aggregated effects. We found that micro‐scale social factors can determine the efficiency of invasion control to the extent that higher level management strategies, such as early detection of the invasion, become irrelevant. Our experiments support a management strategy for New Zealand conifer invasion that is based on targeting both social and ecological factors. Combining establishment of shared rules for control participation that target socially conditioned behaviour with coordination of control action based on the aggressiveness of the invasion can amplify the efficiency of control at landscape level. Our survey shows that New Zealand landowners are generally highly motivated to control the invasion, but they also adapt their control behaviour to that of others and are limited by the cost of control. The results indicate that integrating such adaptive landowner behaviour with ecological invasion dynamics can, over time, create feedbacks that decrease landowners’ ability to control the invasion. This study demonstrates that failure to consider how social and ecological factors interact in invasion landscapes can lead to suboptimal control programs and irreversible environmental change. A social‐ecological perspective on biological invasions will significantly improve our ability to explain and manage invasion dynamics. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

Place Attachment and Concern in Relation to Family Forest Landowner Behavior

Contemporary approaches to studying family forests have identified distinct subgroups of landowners through segmentation analysis. Our study expands on this approach, incorporating the concept of place to provide a novel perspective on how the cognition and emotions that create place attachment and landowner concerns influence certain landowner behaviors. We specifically modeled legacy planning and future landowner ownership behavioral intentions/behaviors. A mail survey was administered to a statewide sample of Maine family forest landowners that measured place attachment and landowner concerns regarding biophysical and social conditions on their woodland. Results based on the 878 respondents (54.9% response rate) indicated place attachment and landowner concern are related to legacy planning, land ownership, and development behavioral intentions, and when considered in conjunction with segmentation analysis, it was found the majority of family forest landowners in the sample experienced strong place attachment and moderate levels of concern. Our study suggests that forest outreach, forest policies and additional family forest research should further consider and incorporate the intangibles of the landowner experience.

Economics of intercropping loblolly pine and oilseed crops for bio-jet fuel production in the Southern United States

Currently, there are 13.9 million hectares of loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) in the Southern United States. Reforested hectares could be used for intercropping oilseed crops such as carinata (Brassica carinata) and white lupin (Lupinus albus L.). The oil obtained from these crops could be used for bio-jet fuel production to reduce the carbon footprint of the aviation sector. This study determines the profitability for three scenarios: loblolly pine with no intercropping (baseline), loblolly pine with carinata (once every three years), and loblolly pine with carinata and white lupin rotated annually. We ascertained the land expectation value (LEV) for three site indices of 15.3 m, 18.3 m, and 21.3 m. Carinata and white lupin were planted during the initial eight, seven, and six years for site indices 15.3 m, 18.3 m, and 21.3 m, respectively. Sensitivity and risk analyses were undertaken for determining the influence of input variables on LEVs and the probability of loss for intercropping production systems relative to a baseline production system, respectively. For site index 21.3 m, the LEV of loblolly pine with no intercropping was $2816/ha at a 21-years rotation period. Intercropping with carinata only and both carinata and white lupin yielded LEVs of $3346/ha and $3607/ha at a 21-years rotation period, respectively. The LEVs of production systems were sensitive to interest rate, price, and yield of carinata seeds. The intercropping approach had > 50% probability of being less profitable than loblolly pine alone in over half of the scenarios considered. Future research should focus on the impacts of intercropping on loblolly pine yield and adoption behavior of forest landowners.

ІНСТИТУЦІОНАЛЬНІ ЗАСАДИ РЕГУЛЮВАННЯ ЗЕМЕЛЬНИХ ВІДНОСИН В КОНТЕКСТІ ДЕЦЕНТРАЛІЗАЦІЇ ВЛАДИ

The article is devoted to the institutional basis of land relations regulation in the context of authority decentralization. The purpose of the article is development and substantiation of the institutional component of theoretical-methodological and scientific-practical bases of land relations regulation in the conditions of authority decentralization. The object of research was the legal processes of land relations regulation in the conditions of land market opening and increasing the role of territorial communities in land resources management. The importance of the regulatory base development for ensuring the functioning of the agricultural land market, which allows owners to alienate land shares (units) through electronic auctions, has been substantiated. The basic requirements for participants in land auctions for the land sale in the electronic trading system of state property in real time and the Internet have been considered in the article. The area and prices of sold land plots in distribution of agricultural land 12 July 2021 have been analyzed. The features of creation the complex plans of territory development of the united territorial community have been studied. The influence of the State Agrarian Register on the state aid receiving to agricultural producers has been considered. It has substantiated that one of the main tasks for today is to develop the mechanism for regulating the behavior of landowners, land users, government agencies, stakeholders and local governments; relations with the state and society on the involvement of land in a particular type of economic activity; acquisition of their status, capacity and profitability according to legal, economic and environmental norms on the basis of supply and demand in the land market. Thus, today completion of the administrative-territorial reform, the end result of which was the consolidation of administrative-territorial units at the initial levels of the hierarchical structure of the territorial division of the country, there was a transfer of authority to manage land resources to territorial communities. One of the key areas to regulation of land relations should be: an adoption of a number of new bills, which regulate the main issues of land relations in the context of authority decentralization; as well as further creation of the Agricultural Credit Guarantee Fund and development of the procedure for ensuring the right of employees of state agricultural enterprises, institutions, organizations to receive a land share (units).

What drives private landowner decisions? Exploring non-native grass management in the eastern Great Plains

Non-native grasses used as forage for domestic livestock can negatively impact ecosystem services provided by grasslands. In the U.S., most grazed grasslands are privately owned so the introduction and reduction of non-native grasses are both driven by landowner behavior. Yet, the social factors that shape non-native grass management are rarely explored. To address this knowledge gap, we evaluated how decisions to reduce these grasses through practices such as herbicide application, prescribed fire, and physical removal are influenced by attitudes, norms, and perceived ability. We administered a mixed mode (mailback and online) survey in 2017 to landowners in the eastern Great Plains of the U.S., in a region where cattle production remains the predominant land-use. Using structural equation modeling with parceling, we tested hypotheses related to management decisions derived from a model integrating two theories – the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Norm Activation Model. In this analysis, we identified perceived ability (i.e., access to time, skills, or other necessary resources) as a barrier to adoption for landowners who were already willing to manage non-native grasses. Positive attitudes toward management and increased social norm pressures were both associated with increased sentiments of moral responsibility to reduce non-native grasses. These personal norms, together with attitudes, positively influenced willingness to control non-native grasses. Further, we observed that social norms related to expectations of neighbors had more influence on personal norms than the social norms from natural resource agencies. The power of norms to explain individual management decisions suggests that landowners could be engaged in landscape-scale initiatives by leveraging moral responsibility and influential social groups.

Anticipating changes in wildlife habitat induced by private forest owners' adaptation to climate change and carbon policy.

Conserving forests to provide ecosystem services and biodiversity will be a key environmental challenge as society strives to adapt to climate change. The ecosystem services and biodiversity that forests provide will be influenced by the behaviors of numerous individual private landowners as they alter their use of forests in response to climate change and any future carbon pricing policies that emerge. We evaluated the impact of forest landowners’ likely adaptation behaviors on potential habitat for 35 terrestrial, forest-dependent vertebrates across three U.S. Pacific states. In particular, we couple a previously estimated empirical-economic model of forest management with spatially explicit species’ range and habitat associations to quantify the effects of adaptation to climate change and carbon pricing on potential habitat for our focal species (amphibians, birds and mammals) drawn from state agency lists of species of conservation concern. We show that both climate change and carbon pricing policies would likely encourage adaptation away from currently prevalent coniferous forest types, such as Douglas-fir, largely through harvest and planting decisions. This would reduce potential habitat for a majority of the focal species we studied across all three vertebrate taxa. The total anticipated habitat loss for amphibians, birds and mammals considered species of state concern would exceed total habitat gained, and the net loss in habitat per decade would accelerate over time. Carbon payments to forest landowners likely would lead to unintended localized habitat losses especially in Douglas-fir dominant forest types, and encourage more hardwoods on private forest lands. Our study highlights potential tradeoffs that could arise from pricing one ecosystem service (e.g., carbon) while leaving others (e.g., wildlife habitat) unpriced. Our study demonstrates the importance of anticipating potential changes in ecosystem services and biodiversity resulting from forest landowners’ climate adaptation behavior and accounting for a broader set of environmental benefits and costs when designing policies to address climate change.

Ruminations on Economic Decision Modeling of Managing Forest Resources with a Focus on Family Forest Landowners

Abstract Abstract The classic wealth maximization modeling of forest landowners may not be useful when examining the behavior of family forest landowners in particular. My challenge to the forestry community is to think more broadly with respect to the economic modeling of management decisions by these landowners. I would propose that forest structure (e.g., trees per unit area versus diameter class/distribution) versus time, as opposed to volume versus time, is a superior and practical approach to model forest dynamics given these landowners’ well-published preferences. I would also propose that a cost-minimization/least-cost model is also more consistent with their well-published preferences. These proposals, however, are not without their advantages and disadvantages that are examined briefly. Nonetheless, my conclusions are that scholarship based on a least-cost approach could provide insights that the classical wealth maximization modeling may not, given landownership trends.

Using Behavioral Change Models to Understand Private Landowner Perceptions of Prescribed Fire in North Dakota

In the northern Great Plains of North America, Kentucky bluegrass has become a conservation concern on many remaining rangelands. Reintroduction of fire may be one of the best ways to combat bluegrass invasion in the northern Great Plains, but perceptions of risk and other societal constraints currently limit its use. We mailed a self-administered questionnaire to 460 landowners in North Dakota to identify landowner attitudes and perceptions toward prescribed fire and understand major factors that limit the use of fire in rangeland management of this area. We draw from the theory of planned behavior and the transtheoretical model of behavior change, two widely used behavioral models, to better understand differences in motivations between ranchers and nonranchers and then formulate engagement actions conducive to a change in fire application behavior. Our results indicate that 55% of nonranchers and 38% of ranchers saw prescribed fire as a beneficial tool, with 25% of nonranchers and 9% of ranchers having performed a prescribed fire on their land. We therefore deduced these two groups were in different behavioral stages. Increasing understanding of the benefits of prescribed fire to forage quality and increasing overall acceptance of fire in North Dakota may be effective for ranchers, whereas approaches that address the lack of labor and equipment would be more applicable to nonranchers. Results also show that once respondents have decided to include the periodic use of prescribed fire as part of their management plans, there is a strong likelihood that they will perform a prescribed fire. On the basis of these findings, we propose that focusing on sociological factors influencing behavior of landowners can inform targeted strategies for increasing prescribed fire perceptions and application in the study area.

A stochastic programming model with endogenous uncertainty for incentivizing fuel reduction treatment under uncertain landowner behavior

Reducing the potential damage caused by a wildfire is a problem of significant importance to land and fire managers. Fuel reduction treatment is a well-known method of reducing the risk of fire occurrence and spread on landscapes. However, officials seeking fuel reduction treatments on privately owned lands can only encourage it through incentive programs such as cost-share programs. This research developed a methodology that provides the basis for a decision-making tool to help managers allocate limited cost-share resources among a set of landowners to maximize wildfire risk reduction by implementing a hazardous fuel reduction treatment. A key feature of the methodology is that it incorporates uncertainty in the landowners’ decision of whether or not to implement treatment on their lands. The methodology is based on a stochastic programming model with endogenous uncertainty where the probability that a landowner accepts a cost-share offer to implement a fuel reduction treatment on their land depends on the offer amount. To estimate the probability that a landowner accepts a given cost-share offer amount, we used a predictive modeling technique to analyze landowner survey data. The results provide insight about the effects of different cost-share allocation strategies on the expected damage. Numerical experiments show that the risk-based allocation provides up to 37.3% more reduction in damage compared to other strategies that allocate equal cost-share amounts among landowners. Additionally, the results show that the solution quality is substantially sensitive to changes in the number of resource allocation levels.

Understanding PES from the ground up: a combined choice experiment and interview approach to understanding PES in Costa Rica

Payments for environmental services (PES) are part of a suite of market-based conservation mechanisms that have gained international attention for their potential to produce ecosystem services across private landholdings. The Costa Rican government, a PES pioneer, provides landowners with remuneration for conserving forest cover on their properties. The efficiency and effectiveness of PES programs have been critiqued, because little is understood about the ability of payments to alter landowner behavior. Unique to the existent literature, we combine data from semi-structured interviews with an economic nonmarket valuation technique, the stated choice experiment, to explore preferences for PES and the impact of PES on decision making in the mixed-use Bellbird Biological Corridor of Costa Rica. The choice experiment reveals farmer preferences for PES, while interviews provide context for the choice experiment results and illuminate the implications for policy. Results show that farmer objections to PES design and program implementation influence willingness to accept payments for conservation efforts. Results further indicate that a significant share of farmers in the study area are resistant to the PES program irrespective of competitive payments offered. We suggest that this overall resistance to the program is a key driver of program inefficiency. We further suggest that potential program improvements require better engagement with multifaceted landowner values, and that PES may not constitute an effective mechanism for engaging small-scale farmers in conservation.

Obstacles to participation in carbon sequestration for nonindustrial private forest landowners in the southern United States: A diffusion of innovations perspective

Forest carbon sequestration, resulting in increased carbon storage in forests, is an effective tool for climate change mitigation. Nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) landowner participation is crucial for increasing carbon stocks in the southern United States forests. Carbon sequestration is a relatively new practice, so NIPF landowners are expected to have varied adoption responses depending on their different internal (socioeconomic, financial, and forest structure factors) and external (environmental, governmental policy, and market factors) environments. This study identified major obstacles for NIPF participation in carbon sequestration and grouped landowners into adoption categories with respect to carbon sequestration using the diffusion of innovations model. Principal component analysis was used to identify five major obstacles to participation in carbon sequestration programs: revenue implications, forest characteristics, owner preferences, normative reasons, and understanding. NIPF landowners were grouped into three adoption categories: adopters (18%), majority (60%) and laggards (22%). The adopters, compared to the other categories, were richer, more educated, relatively younger, and owned larger landholdings. These results provide a valuable insight about the adoption behavior of NIPF landowners with respect to climate change mitigation programs in the southern United States. Program planners and outreach professionals should consider these NIPF landowner adoption categories and the role of peer landowners in promoting new programs and policies for developing effective mitigation strategies.