More Forest More Problems? Understanding Family Forest Owners’ Concerns in the United States

Forests face an increasing number of threats, which are expected to increase in frequency and intensity in the future. Recent calls have pointed out the need for holistic approaches when developing forest management policies, which requires a broad understanding of how forest owners perceive the uncertainties and risks that may threaten their forests. In this paper, we study a set of sixteen concerns in the United States National Woodland Owner Survey (NWOS). Our set of concerns span an array of types and causes-natural and anthropogenic-that capture multiple aspects of forest ownership. We measure the level of concern that family forest owners associate with each concern variable, and explore how they vary with each other. We then measure "total concernedness" to study how individuals distribute their concerns across multiple ownership challenges, and relate total concern to socio-demographic and forest-ownership attributes. We find that private forest owners moderately distribute their concerns across all types, as opposed to high levels of concern for one issue and none for others, and that concerns are, in general, positively correlated with each other. Our analysis highlights a general need for policy and regulations that properly consider the full suite of owner preferences, including concerns.