Finnish Forest Owner 2020: Profitability of private forestry and structural changes in forest ownership

Participants

Helsingin yliopisto

Description

Duration: 2018-2021

Forest Owner 2020 analyzes the structural changes in private forest ownership and ownerhip
objectives in Finland and their effects on forestry behavior. The project results will be useful in
improving roundwood procurement for forest industries, developing expert and labor services for
forest owners, improving the effectiveness of forest policy instruments, improving the legitimacy
of forest utilization and forestry operations, combining various forest benefits and improving
entrepreneurship in private forestry. The project produces statistics about the amounts of the use
of own family labor force in forest management activities (self-activity) and depicts forest owners'
use of digital forest services.

The study analyzes the following specific topics:

• How forest owners’ characteristics and their ownership objectives have changed and will change in the future?
• How these changes, especially urbanization, affect timber sales and forest management?
• How these changes affect the legitimacy of forest utilization and forestry operations?
• How these changes affect the use of expert and labor services, especially digital services?
• How these changes affect forestry extension officers’ working environment?
• How large a share of forest work is executed by own family labor force?
• What kind of role do forest owners have as producers of ecosystem services?
• How many forest owners see themselves as forestry entrepreneurs and what kind of restrictions they perceive in their business?

The project will utilize various kinds of register data and collects also a large mail/internet survey
data.