Shaping the Forest: Comparing Urban and Non-Urban Forest Owners’ Attitudes Towards Alternative Forest Management in Sweden

Urban forests play a key role in providing spaces where recreational needs can be met. Urban sprawl and densification increase the need for recreation in these forests, often requiring their management to balance multiple competing ecosystem service demands. Alternatives to rotation forestry, i.e. uneven-aged forestry, are seen as an attractive solution for preserving recreational values by reshaping the forest landscape into multilayered tree coverage with multiple age classes while retaining its aesthetic appeal. Understanding forest owners’ opinions towards alternative forestry systems is essential for their implementation and success. This paper explores self-reported forest management preferences in Swedish forests and identifies drivers of forest owners’ attitudes towards alternative forestry. The goals are 1) to understand what influences forest owners’ motivation to use alternative forestry, and 2) to test whether there are differences between urban and non-urban forest owners’ opinions about the identified methods. To accomplish this, 1,000 private forest owners across 62 Swedish municipalities were surveyed on their thoughts about diverse forest management methods. The Theory of Planned Behaviour was implemented to identify drivers and barriers influencing forest owners in their forest management decision-making. In contrast to conventional economic theory, the results suggest that urban forest owners’ management decisions go beyond revenue considerations. Forest owners’ ability to control the outcome of their forest management significantly affects their motivation to try alternative forestry practices. Other factors, such as access to knowledge, external factors and risk uncertainty, were identified as indirectly impacting their decisions as well.