Timber harvesting intensity and use of decision-support tools among semi-professional private forest owners: a...

Non-industrial private forest owners are known to have multiple ownership values and objectives. Their management decisions have multiple impacts on the supply of ecosystem services from forests. Forest management plans, a main decision-support tool for many forest owners, tend to be timber-oriented, potentially leading to more harvesting and more frequent use among production-oriented owners. We investigated factors explaining harvest intensity, measured as the ratio of property-level actual harvest volumes to predicted harvest volumes and the use of forest management plans among 119 semi-professional, non-industrial, private forest owners in Norway. Harvest intensity decreased with forest area and with biodiversity and nextgeneration's need as ownership objectives and increased with wood prices and owner engagement but was not impacted by short-term profit or use of forest management plans. Use of forest management plans increased with forest area, having received instructions, trust in the harvest predictions, and economic ownership objectives. By using property-level harvest prediction, we could compare harvest figures to the actual timber resource, formed by each property's forest biophysical attributes. This approach may be a valuable step in developing models that provide enhanced understanding of how forest owner behavior is shaped by preferences and objectives.