Factors influencing forestland enrollment in Georgia's preferential property tax programs

More than two-thirds of Georgia's private forestland (or 14.6 million acres) are enrolled in one of the state's preferential property tax programs. Besides alleviating property tax burdens for rural landowners, the purposes of these incentive programs have gradually evolved from ensuring a sustainable supply of agricultural and timber products to promoting the conservation of rural open space and provision of ecosystem services. This study examined the factors associated with forestland enrollment in Georgia's major current-use tax programs using a combination of parcel-level spatial data, property tax roll, and county-level economic data for all private forestland in the study counties. A multilevel logistic regression model was used to control the effects of hierarchical data structure. A forest parcel's size, tax savings, neighboring parcel enrollment, land value, land productivity, landowner's residence status in relation to the property, development potential (e.g., distance to cities, county population density) as well as distance to lakes and identified conservation areas are important predictors of its likelihood of being enrolled in the property tax incentive programs. Larger forest parcels, located close to identified potential conservation areas, characterized by high soil productivity, held by non-absentee owners, and adjacent to enrolled parcels were more likely to be enrolled in the current-use tax programs.