Reflections of active forest owners to the public-private forestry support system in Estonia

Private forestry has become a more profound research topic during the past decade in Estonia (Põllumäe & Korjus, 2017) as the sector itself has developed and expanded since the regaining of independence in 1991. Private landowners (more than 100,000) are increasingly more responsible for providing an extensive range of goods, products and services. For example, private forest owners (PFO) harvest 50–60% of the total timber harvesting volume (1/3 comes from small-scale forest owners) and biodiversity protection is provided on 14% of private forest area under different conservation regimes in Estonia. Privately owned protected forests account for 30% of the total area of forests under protection. Within these increased responsibilities of private forest owners, the public authorities and national forest policy have significantly influenced and guided the developments in the sector (Keskkonnaagentuur, 2017). Since the early 1990s, it was recognized that forest policy has to tackle with a variety of problems that new private forest ownership raises, e.g. lack of forest owners’ knowledge and fragmentation (Forest policy, 1997). To ensure guided management of private forests from the forest policy perspective, a support system has been established (Figure 1). This system includes firstly the state authorities responsible for managing financial support schemes and measures (i.e. mainly the foundation Private Forest Centre, PFC, established in 1999). Secondly, regional forest owners’ associations (FOA, today approximately 35 FOAs exist in Estonia) whose second wave of establishment was in the early 2000s (Põllumäe & Korjus, 2017). Thirdly, national forest owners’ interest-representing umbrella organisation Estonian Private Forest Union, EPFU, with 22 regional FOAs as members (EPFU, 2019). Fourthly, two secondary cooperatives (established in 2009 and 2013 by regional FOAs) responsible for timber sales/forest management activities. This support system aims to help the forest owners in their forestry activities and forms a complex public-private partnership. However, when looking at small-scale forest owners – the target group – the support system as a whole needs continuous information about the ever-changing ownership characteristics. Such information is important from the forest policy planning, designing and implementing perspectives. Previous research has shown that the forest management objectives and related characteristics (e.g. motivations) influence, for example, how landowners react to policy tools (Janota & Broussard, 2008) or communication (Hujula & Tikkanen, 2008). In the context of Estonia, the latest mapping of forest owners’ informational and service-related needs goes back some 16 years (Toivonen et al., 2005). Therefore, the general objective of this study is to identify the service and information needs of PFOs in Estonia in the context of the established support system. In addition, to explore how these needs are influenced by various ownership characteristics and how current policy and service developments meet the requirements of forest owners.

Figure 1

Recent research has illustrated how diverse and fragmented forest ownership and owners can be (Weiss et al., 2019b). One of the main ways to systemize and illustrate this diversity has been developing forest owners’ typologies (c.f. Ficko et al., 2019). In many cases, such typologies are based on selected socio-demographic characteristics and/or the diverse values and/or objectives of the forest owners. However, the nature of the objectives can vary across the geographical (e.g. Tikkanen et al., 2006), historical or socio-economic (Weiss et al., 2019a) continuum, making the typologies from different regions very difficult to compare (Ficko et al., 2019). While limited from several perspectives, such typologies can be useful. For example, the most common application has been their use in teaching academic courses, while their application in policy-making has been more limited. One of the reasons could be that such typologies are very limited when predicting forest owners’ actual behaviour (Ficko et al., 2019). Forest owner typologies are more likely simplified illustrations of how diverse forest ownership and management can be. Despite the limitations it is highlighted that such diversity of forest owners is often not reflected in forest-related concepts and policies (Weiss et al., 2019b). Moreover, policy-makers’ impression about private forest owners is often limited to the understanding that the owners are not very interested in management activities and are rather passive (Feliciano et al., 2017). Such owner type – passive or indifferent – is frequently also identified in numerous studies (c.f. Ficko et al., 2019) when classifying owners. From a policy-making viewpoint, however, the diversity of forest owners and thus their different psychological (c.f. Matilainen et al., 2019) or socio-demographic (e.g. Schaaf & Broussard, 2006) aspects are important. This is because, besides policy formulation, participation, regular evaluations and monitoring, forest policy-making means also its implementation (Krott, 2005). The implementation includes a selection of policy tools or instruments with the aim of changing or sustaining a particular behaviour of forest owners. These instruments vary significantly as to how they are employed and how they influence attitudes or behaviour. One classical division of the tools is into sticks, carrots and sermons (c.f. Serbruyns & Luyssaert, 2006). The first of these (sticks) refers to binding regulatory instruments, such as laws and regulations. The second category (carrots) describes financial means for regulating behaviour e.g. support measures, cost-share programs, etc. The third group (sermons) characterizes instruments that are not binding but aimed more at informing and educating the target group. The connection between instrument choice, policy changes and forest owner diversity is therefore something rather obvious, hence the criticism that policy-makers should consider such diversity even more (Weiss et al., 2019b). However, at the same time it has been reported that forest owners can be quite reluctant in accepting instruments that start to intervene with their existing practices (Serbruyns & Luyssaert, 2006). Different forest owners prefer different instruments, but they also might react to policy changes in a way that does not coincide with the expectations of policy-makers (Sotirov et al., 2019). For example, Sarvašová et al. (2019) showed how the Natura 2000 compensation measure as a financial policy instrument has failed to accost many private forest owners in Europe due to both administrative burdens and potential conflicts with property rights. Furthermore, Quiroga et al. (2019) have indicated that forest owners with economically oriented goals are more in favour of financial policy instruments, such as subsidies. They also conclude that there are differences between Eastern and Western European forest owners in this respect; namely the Eastern European forest owners being more interested in such subsidy-based instruments.

As mentioned previously, there has been a similar study (i.e. Toivonen et al., 2005) looking at forest owners’ information and service needs by comparing Estonian and Finnish situations. However, there have been quite significant changes – i.e. a comprehensive support system has been established – in the sector and the ownership itself has developed further. Pivoriūnas & Lazdinis (2004) have similarly analysed the situation in Lithuania. Both Toivonen et al. (2005) and Pivoriūnas & Lazdinis (2004) conclude that private landowners are multi-objective in their management. Lately, the idea that forest owners’ conceptualization about forest management is linked to the multi-functionality of forests has found further evidence (Feliciano et al., 2017). Interestingly, in both the Estonian and Lithuanian cases, it was reported that one of the main issues of concern to owners are pests and diseases that influence their forests. Ficko & Boncina (2015) were looking at the owners’ representation of forest management and similarly found that the maintenance of the forest is one of the main ways owners conceptualize forest management. This included the idea of taking care of the forest so that it would not be neglected. In addition, Pivoriūnas & Lazdinis (2004) highlight the existence of knowledge gaps about forestry and forest management, but also bureaucracy as an obstacle. Their analysis did not exemplify the nature of bureaucracy; however, the regulation of forestry-related activities was mentioned.

An online questionnaire survey was conducted from October to November 2017 for the study. The respondents were reached by using two main channels. A total of 6,687 forest owners were reached directly by e-mail with the help of the PFC who managed the database of forest owners who had previously applied for forest-related support measures. In addition, 35 FOA representatives were contacted with the request to forward the online questionnaire to the members of the FOAs. In the case of both channels, also one reminder was sent almost two weeks after the initial request. These channels were used as there are no freely accessible and unified databases of all PFOs in Estonia which would allow a more representative survey approach. Similar structural obstacles have been present in some previous studies from Estonia (e.g. Põllumäe et al., 2014). The questionnaire included close-ended questions on generic ownership characteristics (size, tenure, ownership duration); used informational sources; knowledge and personal experience with the stakeholders within the support system; importance of selected forest management services; information needs and their importance. Both open-ended and close-ended questions were used in combination in the questionnaire. The open-ended questions focused on the nature of the support system (Q1)

Q1: Please describe the shortcomings of today’s private forestry support system and how these could be remedied?

In total, we collected 780 responses to the survey. Due to re-occurrences and missing answers, the responses of 23 PFOs were excluded from the dataset resulting in an adjusted number of 757 observations. The general characteristics of the respondents show that we were moderately successful in capturing the diversity of PFOs. Approximately half (52.3%) of the respondents are members of FOAs. The majority of respondents indicated themselves as private individuals (83.4%). However, among some of these respondents were also individuals who owned companies that were forest owners as 11.6% of respondents were also legal persons (companies) and 13.6% self-employed persons. 63.3% of the respondents are male and 36.7% female, whereas on the national level the gender proportions of physical forest owners are 54.6% and 45.4%, respectively (Keskkonnaagentuur, 2017). The shape of the age distribution of the respondents is similar to the one of Estonian private forest owners in general. However, age groups 41–50, 51–60 and 61–70 have higher shares in our dataset and the rest of the age classes have somewhat lower proportions than on the national level. In comparison to the official statistics, the shares of ownership size classes in our dataset are more equally distributed. This also means that owners with small properties (0.1–5 ha) are underrepresented (65% on the national level vs 17.4% in our dataset). The mean ownership duration is 18 years and there are 74 respondents that have owned their forest since 1991 when Estonia regained independence. 21% of the respondents stated that they live on the same property where their forest is located and 24.5% live within 1 to 10 km of their forest holding.

The content of open-ended questions (Q1, Q2) was analysed in the ATLAS.ti software by openly coding the answers (c.f. Krippendorff, 2004). For Q1, we received 356 and for Q2 409 answers (i.e. 47% and 55%, respectively, from the total number of observations). The first coding procedure resulted in 37 different codes with the occurrence of 436 (including possible overlaps) times in total for Q1 and for Q2, the respective numbers were 16 and 606. These were further merged and categorized based on the similarities of the content of each code (see Tables 5 and 6). Based on their content, each code family was then described.

For the set of close-ended questions where the PFOs had to assess the availability and importance of information, the importance-performance analysis (IPA) was applied. The same procedure was also used for the questions about the perceived importance and quality of services that the support system offers. The IPA framework, introduced by Martilla & James (1977), is a commonly used tool for determining the attributes of a service or a product that need improvement to enhance competitiveness. The survey included 14 pairs of questions

Please assess the importance of the following services for private forest owners. / Have you used any of the following services, if yes – how satisfied were you with the quality of the service?

In regards to the informational needs of PFOs, the results from the IPA reveal that improvement efforts should focus on two main areas – forest management activities and support measures. One could argue that PFOs seem to be economically motivated as there is a strong demand for information about forest management service companies, contacts and prices (item 28) as well as for the principles and means of timber and harvesting rights sales (item 29). Both of these informational items fall into the “concentrate here” category of the IPA and have low numbers of satisfied respondents. Although private forestry support measures (item 27) is in the “keep up the good work” category, it should also be prioritised as it has the highest mean importance rating and a notable performance gap. The correlation analysis shows that private persons tend to give lower performance scores for items 23, 24, 28 and 29 than self-employed persons; however, there was no difference in the perceived importance. That may be due to their lower competence, because private persons gave advisory services (item 34) higher importance ratings than self-employed or legal persons and the same trend was evident in the information needs section where the profile and contacts of consultants (item 26) are positively correlated with private persons and negatively with legal persons. This could also reflect the need within the support system to communicate respective issues to smaller-scale forest owners as they are relatively less satisfied with the information performance. We also infer that PFOs regard the processes of timber and harvesting rights sales and applying for support measures to be too complex and involving too much bureaucracy. This is also reflected in the second open-ended question (Q2) where everyday forest management activities were considered to be the most important services. Legal persons seem to rate the importance of information on private forestry support measures (item 27) higher and it is also positively correlated with the length of ownership and property size. This may also indicate that legal persons due to the longer ownership duration and a higher level of knowledge have more awareness about the possibilities of the support measures. In the IPA, forest certification information received the lowest priority ratings however female owners considered the information about certification more important than male owners and self-employed owners did not find such information important.

The services and products the PFOs regard as highly necessary intersect rather well in the IPA and in the response groups of the second open-ended question (Q2). Arranging and organizing forest management activities had the highest number of occurrences for Q2 and in the IPA this is reflected by the more specific items 33 (forest regeneration) and 43 (forest management plans) which are both located in the “keep up the good work” quadrants. However, IPA results show forest harvesting activities (item 38) as a lower-priority service, whereas in Q2 organizing everyday forest management activities was specifically stated as a highly important service for small owners. Also, there is no significant correlation between forest harvesting activities and any of the general characteristics of the respondents. Firstly, one possible explanation is that owners with small properties are underrepresented in our dataset. Secondly, in Q2 forest work which included harvesting activities also incorporated different kind of harvesting, but also planting and other management activities. It could be that in the IPA, harvesting activities were understood by the respondents as final fellings; whereas in Q2 forest work included many silvicultural activities, e.g. stand tending and thinnings. The latter are known to be important to many owners as there is a support scheme in Estonia to encourage pre-commercial thinnings in stands younger than 35 years. The advice and extension service also has a high share of occurrences in Q2 and judging by the IPA its counterparts 34 (counselling) and 42 (assistance in applying for support measures) are performing well. Support measures are indicated as an important service in both analyses and are placed in the “keep up the good work” quadrant on the IPA grid (item 35). The information needs of the PFOs seem to be mostly satisfied as these have a mediocre share of occurrences and the respective items in the IPA are located in the “keep up the good work” (41, training days) and “possible overkill” quadrants (44, publishing booklets). Timber and harvesting rights sales have a low occurrence in Q2 but the IPA, where these were included as separate items, shows that focus should be put on timber sales (37), whereas harvesting rights (39) are of low overall priority, but are more important for private persons with small forest holdings as is evident from the correlations. Such joint timber sales have only been conducted since 2009 with the establishment of a cooperative which was followed by the establishment of a second one in 2013. Compared to many other services, joint timber sales are, including e.g. certification, quite new to many forest owners. The main contradiction between the results of IPA and Q2 is that while interest representation seems to be of least concern in Q2, IPA shows it (item 45) as the highest priority item (farthest from the iso-rating diagonal) and it also has the greatest performance gap. The correlations show that interest representation is more important to younger owners, although ownership duration does not have a significant influence. Within Q2 there were very specific issues that the respondents raised, e.g. taxation, expanding nature protection areas and high levels of bureaucracy. Therefore, the contradiction between the IPA and Q2 could be perhaps interpreted as a general feeling of the respondents about their status or position as forest owners in regards of policy-makers. In the IPA, forest certification service (likewise to information) received an overall low-priority rating with relatively lower importance ratings from self-employed persons compared to private individuals or companies.

With the increase in absentee ownership and the decrease in own work in the forest there is a greater need for labour services (Q2, Karppinen, 2012). Furthermore, the diverse set of small-scale forest ownership objectives, attitudes and needs of the service providers, encourages all parties to change and adapt accordingly in order to be successful. Conventional forest management activities and services need to adapt to the changed objectives and diverse scattered ownerships (Snyder et al., 2019).

To conclude with a broader view on the aspects of small-scale forest landowner research, the authors agree with Toivonen et al. (2005) that a system of regular evaluations and analysis of private forest owners should be implemented on the national level. Why not even on a regional level? Many CEE countries face rather similar patterns of ownership changes (Weiss et al., 2019b), FOA developments (Sarvašová et al., 2015) or patterns in owners’ characteristics (Matilainen et al., 2019). Similarly to what is being done with forests as biological objects – e.g. with the national forest inventory – information is required to adjust, implement and report sustainable forest management. Having abundant data about the forest alone might not provide a sufficient amount of information to guide forest policy developments and implementation. What we would add here in the Estonian context is firstly the need to have a survey approach with a representative sample from the overall population of owners. Previously (e.g. Toivonen et al., 2005; Põllumäe et al., 2014), we have reached more active owners, hence a crucial part of owners has not been covered by our investigations. The results of this study reflect the views of more active owners and thus are biased. It is difficult to assess or predict the direction to where the focus point of the results would go if the respondents had been based on a random sample of the overall population of private forest owners. Secondly, future research should also focus on issues that are more specific, e.g. the social networks of Estonian private forest owners and on the influences that these networks induce. It is known, however, that such continuous monitoring systems of forest ownership and its changes are, with a handful of exceptions (e.g. Finland, United States, Sweden), quite rare (Weiss et al., 2019b). Nevertheless, in Estonia we have made many important steps in landowner research during the past decades and the establishment of such a system nowadays is more in the hands of policy-makers.

This paper focused on the assessment of the private forest owners’ support system and information needs in Estonia. More particularly, we concentrated on reflecting the forest owners’ views on the existing private-public support system for forest owners which mainly consists of regional FOAs and the state foundation Private Forest Centre. This symbiosis has been established as a form of collaborative governance of private forests and is used by the state to implement formal forest policies. It therefore forms a triangular relationship between the forest owners, FOAs and the state; each with slightly different views on the private forest. This is why there is a need for increased knowledge about these components of the system; perhaps the forest owners being the segment that we know much less about compared to the rest. However, the results of this study reflect the views of more active owners. Future research should also focus on issues that are more specific, e.g. the social networks of Estonian private forest owners and on the influences that these networks induce. Considering our general objective, the presented results and discussions, we would like to conclude that: -

Estonian forest owners consider information about consultants and financial support measures most important, while forest certification and forest owners’ interest representation in policy-making seem to be topics that owners are less interested about.