Forest social values in a Swedish rural context: The private forest owners' perspective

The sustainability paradigm of the European Landscape Convention calls for increased involvement of all affected parties in combination with active leadership to promote social values. As a result, the Swedish Forest Agency (SFA) has requested further development of methods for broad consultation and active participation in order to strengthen the social values of forests. This paper aims to identify in particular the private forest owners' perceived need for collaboration and dialog regarding the social values of forests. The study's primary empirical data was derived from interviews with 40 private forest owners. A framework developed by Emerson et al. (2012) was applied to facilitate analysis of the forest owners' perceptions of procedural and institutional arrangements, existing leadership, the current level of knowledge and access to different types of resources. The paper identifies a need for the SFA to become more proactive and assume more of a leading role. The level of knowledge regarding social values was found to be quite low among the majority of the private forest owners. They wanted more information; they asked for increased support and advice, and they wanted to see improved coordination rather than collaboration on social values.