Forestland owners' willingness to plant pine on non-forested land for woody bioenergy in Virginia

Journal Article · Wed Sep 07 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Forest Policy and Economics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2016.09.003· OSTI ID:1770182

Lal, Pankaj ^[1]; Wolde, Bernabas ^[2]; Alavalapati, Janaki ^[3]; Burli, Pralhad ^[2]; Munsell, John ^[4]

---

1. Montclair State University, NJ (United States); University of Florida
2. Montclair State University, NJ (United States)
3. Auburn University, AL (United States)
4. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA (United States)

We report woody bioenergy provides an opportunity for new source of revenue, which forestland owners can respond to either by supplying biomass from an existing stand or by establishing feedstock plantations on currently non-forested land. Using survey data sent out to 900 randomly selected participants in Virginia, we assess if forestland owners would allocate parts of their currently non-forested land, such as cropland and pasture/grazing land, to growing loblolly pine for bioenergy production purposes. Using recursive partitioning based logistic regression, we show that the decision to plant pine on non-forested land depends both on economic and non-economic fac- tors, including price, demographic attributes of the forestland owner, mode of land acquisition and their respective threshold values, providing profile types policies encouraging biomass supply can use in tailoring their efforts. Using bid values, expected landowner revenue from growing pine, we also find a mean willingness to accept value of 1424/acre. Furthermore, our results also show that the choice among land use types follows economies of scale while the choice among land covers for a given land use type follows species diversification.

• Research Organization: Montclair State University, NJ (United States); University of Florida, Gainesville, FL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: Montclair State University; US Dept. of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture; USDOE; USDOE Office of International Affairs (IA); Virginia Polytechnic and State University
• Grant/Contract Number: PI0000031
• OSTI ID: 1770182
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1533784; OSTI ID: 1398091
• Journal Information: Forest Policy and Economics, Journal Name: Forest Policy and Economics Vol. 73; ISSN 1389-9341
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Virginia
bioenergy markets
landowner survey
loblolly pine
recursive partitioning based logistic regression
woody biomass