Amenities of Swedish forests

The forests of Sweden provide many amenities (e.g. timber, outdoor recreation and biodiversity) that contribute to the welfare of forest owners and other stakeholder groups in society. The amenities have characteristics of private and public goods. In this thesis, measures of attitudes and values towards different forest amenities were studied by means of mail surveys and existing literature. In paper I, the attitudes of private forest owners regarding different forest amenities (timber production, outdoor recreation and biodiversity) were investigated and compared with the forest advisors’ interpretation of the forest owners’ attitudes. The survey was conducted in three regions of Sweden (South, Central and North). The results indicated that the timber production was the most important amenity to the private forest owners, followed by outdoor recreation and biodiversity. The forest officers’ understanding of what was important to forest owners did not consistently coincide with the attitudes of the forest owners. Other aspects of outdoor recreation and biodiversity among stakeholder groups of the Swedish public were studied in papers II, III and IV. In paper II, a travel cost analysis was used to estimate the recreational value of the forests in the southernmost part of Sweden (Skåne and Blekinge). An analysis was also conducted to determine how this value would be affected by a change in the share of broadleaves in the region. It was shown that maintaining or increasing the share of broadleaves would positively affect the recreational value. In paper III, outdoor recreation was studied using data on health measures of recreationists from three different mail surveys, (outdoor recreationists among the general Swedish public, forest recreationists in southern Sweden and hunters in Sweden). The results showed that outdoor recreation activities in all three categories were expected to have a positive impact on self-rated health. In paper IV, the value of attaining the national environmental objectives of Sweden, including the protection of forest land for biodiversity purposes, was studied using data from a contingent valuation survey. The value varied between different levels of forest land protection, and the benefits of protection outweighed the costs by a small margin. The values of amenities in a typical broadleaved and a coniferous stand during a rotation period were reviewed in paper V. The results suggested that most amenity values developed in a similar way during the rotation period in the two stands. This was true for all amenities except for berries. Considering recreational values in forest management is unlikely to affect the timing of harvesting decisions, while considering biodiversity values as part of forest management would tend to prolong the rotation age