ABSTRACT
Introduction Concerns about rural land-use change have primarily focused on losses of agricultural lands, with the associated losses in amenities (see e.g., Kline and Wichelns 1996; Ready, Berger, and Blomquist 1997; Mcleod et al. 1998). Policy approaches, such as conservation easements and property tax reductions, have been public attempts to reduce some of these losses. However, concerns about rural land-use change encompass more than simply slowing the loss of a specific type of land use. A broader definition of land-use change also includes issues surrounding changes in management approaches for a particular type of land use. For example, although there may be no net loss of agricultural land, the public is increasingly concerned about changes in livestock management (i.e., the conversion of small livestock operations to large-scale animal feeding operations). During the last two decades, public concern over the use, management, and protection of rural forestland in the United States has grown rapidly. During the 1970s, public participation in forest management decisions on public lands was legislatively integrated into U.S. Forest Service planning decisions (Rosenberger, Smith, and Gonzalez-Caban 1997), and during 1992 the public’s participatory role in public forest management decisions was expanded (Schaberg, Homes, and Abt 1997). More recently, the public has also been asking for the right to influence forest management decisions made on privately held forestlands. For example, in 2000, Maine voters were asked to vote on a forestry referendum that would have limited cutting levels and the ability to use clear cutting techniques on privately held forestland (Forestry Ecology Network 2000). Decisions regarding where, when, and how to cut timber are no longer purely silvicultural decisions made by forest managers, but are increasingly subject to public scrutiny, debate, regulation, and litigation. The debates surrounding the loss of agricultural land often focus on losses of agricultural amenities, such as scenic beauty. Similarly, recent efforts to influence
forest management decisions appear to go beyond preventing obvious environmental degradation, such as soil erosion and nutrient loadings in streams and lakes; the public is now demanding that forestlands also be managed for aesthetic and less-apparent ecological goals. For example, many individuals are against forest management techniques, such as clearcutting (Welsh 2002) or prescribed burning (Taylor and Daniel 1984), solely for aesthetic reasons. Preferences for forestland amenities and for landscape attributes imply underlying preferences for the way these lands are managed. The growing public interest in the management of public and private forestland in the U.S. has presented forest managers and policy makers with the need to better understand these preferences. One approach to doing this is to use conjoint analysis in a survey setting to elicit the public’s preferences.1 Conjoint analysis is a method whereby differentiated goods are described in terms of their attributes and survey respondents are asked to evaluate the assigned combinations of attributes. Timber harvesting can be thought of as a differentiated good where the attributes may include, for example, the size of the land area where harvesting occurs, the number of live tress left in the area after harvesting, and the size of protection zones for wetlands. The primary objective of this research is to use a conjoint survey to elicit the values individuals hold for specific timber harvesting practices on publicly owned forestland in Maine. Previous Research Until recently, there has been little economic research investigating the values individuals may have for different forest management practices. However, in the field of forestry there has been a large body of work conducted on public preferences for forest landscapes and forest conditions. The majority of these studies measure aesthetic preferences using scenic beauty estimation methods where participants are shown photographs and then administered surveys to determine their preferences for specific forest attributes. This research highlights that people have preferences for stands of tall trees (Hull and Buhyoff 1986; Brown 1987; Rudis et al. 1988; Mattsson 1994); small trees are only appreciated when they comprise a lower canopy layer (Schroeder and Daniel 1981; Ribe 1990); tree density should not be so high so as to hamper within-forest visibility (Hull and Buhyoff 1986; Brown 1987; Rudis et al. 1988; Ribe 1990); and slash (the bark, limbs, and other wood debris left in the forest after a logging operation) has a negative impact on scenic beauty (Rosenberger and Smith 1997). Three studies have used a stated preference approach to investigate individuals’ willingness to pay (WTP) for altered forest practices in Europe. Hanley and Ruffell (1993) indicate that individuals in the United Kingdom value improvements in specific forest attributes. Specifically, they find that U.K. forest visitors prefer forests with taller trees, the presence of views, and deciduous (as opposed to coniferous) trees. Although not significant, they also seem to prefer increased species diversity, more open space and the presence of water features.
