What value is provided by family forest land to its owners?: results from the National Woodland Owner Survey (NWOS)

The National Woodland Owner Survey (NWOS) was developed in part to understand why private landowners – individuals, families, corporations, and other organizations – own forest land and what benefits and values that land provides. From the NWOS, we know that family forests provide many elements that forestry experts have traditionally emphasized – products such as wood and non-timber forest products and services such as recreation. However, the NWOS has also highlighted that these are not the primary ownership objectives for many family forest owners (FFOs), with other objectives such as privacy, aesthetics, and protection of nature being more important to the majority. The Total Economic Values (TEV) framework provides a theoretically complete typology of human values and is therefore a potentially useful means of fully accounting for the total value that landowners derive from their land. Many traditional products and services associated with private forests are classified in the TEV as direct use values; these include things such as timber and other wood products, and outdoor recreation. In general, these values are already adequately covered by the NWOS and other studies, but TEV also includes indirect use, non-use, and option value. These are generally not as well represented in the NWOS instrument or the empirical FFO literature. To address this knowledge gap, an NWOS survey supplement focused on landowner values was developed and implemented in Arkansas and Massachusetts, USA. This paper summarizes quantitative and qualitative findings, highlighting that family forests provide landowners with multiple sources of use value, non-use value, and option value.