Embedding non-industrial private forest owners in forest policy and bioeconomy issues using a Living Lab concept

International policies have set sustainable development goals that put emphasis on bioeconomy strategies based on renewable resources. The forestry sector, by providing bio-based products, is expected to take part in this bioeconomy with, among other things, the reduction of society's dependence on fossil fuels. Nevertheless, in Europe, the forestry sector is facing an increase in the number of small private forest ownerships, called non-industrial private forests (NIPF), where wood mobilization is difficult due to both ownership fragmentation and the lack of interest of non-industrial forest owners in existing forest-wood chains. Although many policy instruments have been put in place to address this situation, the problem persists for two main reasons. First, a lack of use of policy instruments by forest owners and second, a lack of collaboration between stakeholders. To provide solutions, we propose a methodology to design territorial projects with non-industrial forest owners in the framework of a Living Lab innovation process. This paper presents both the general method developed and analyzed through open and user-centered innovation concepts and its practical implementation in the Vosges department in France. Our results show how the Living Lab approach can improve the acceptance, adoption and use of policy instruments by NIPF owners and how it promotes multi-stakeholder collaborations to design and deploy innovative solutions. The main interest of our study is to provide a methodology to pilot a forestry Living Lab for policy makers and practitioners, based on rigorous concepts of innovation management. Finally, future developments and limitations of our study are discussed in a global research perspective.