Determinants of enrollment in public incentive programs for forest management and their effect on future programs for woody bioenergy: evidence from Virginia and Texas

Journal Article · Thu Mar 31 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Canadian Journal of Forest Research

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1139/cjfr-2015-0335· OSTI ID:1769880

Wolde, Bernabas ^[1]; Lal, Pankaj ^[2]; Gan, Jianbang ^[3]; Alavalapati, Janaki ^[4]; Taylor, Eric ^[5]; Burli, Pralhad ^[2]

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1. Montclair State Univ., NJ (United States); University of Florida
2. Montclair State Univ., NJ (United States)
3. Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States)
4. Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ. (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA (United States)
5. Texas A & M Forest Service, Overton, TX (United States)

Several federal- and state-sponsored programs, including cost-sharing arrangements, tax incentives, and technical assistance programs, are available to forestland owners, aiming to encourage desired forest management practices and outcomes. However, enrollment rates in such programs are low, and trends of forestland parcelization hint at an even smaller enrollment rate in the future. Therefore, it is important to understand how socioeconomic attributes of forestland owners and past experience with such programs affect the likelihood of enrollment in public incentive programs. Among others, this will help us provide tailored information to forestland owners who are less likely to use these opportunities through extension and outreach programs. Towards this end, we conducted a survey of 1800 forestland owners in Virginia and Texas. Our recursive partitioning, logistic regression, and Cochran–Armitage trend test results suggest that forestland owners who are less likely to enroll in such programs have relatively smaller forestland acreage, a lower level of education, and shorter land ownership tenure. We also find that forestland owners with experience in public incentive programs tend to attach higher importance to potential programs, including those that do not directly benefit them. Furthermore, we also identify threshold values for explanatory variables such as acreage and tenure length.

• Research Organization: Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: US Dept. of Agriculture National Inst. of Food and Agriculture; USDOE Office of International Affairs (IA)
• Grant/Contract Number: PI0000031
• OSTI ID: 1769880
• Journal Information: Canadian Journal of Forest Research, Journal Name: Canadian Journal of Forest Research Journal Issue: 6 Vol. 46; ISSN 0045-5067
• Publisher: Canadian Science Publishing
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
forestland owners
policy preference
public incentive program
recursive partitioning
woody bioenergy