What to do with mushroom pickers in my forest? Policy tools fromthe landowners' perspective

Wild mushroom picking is a growing recreational and commercial activity. In Spain, wild mushroomslegally belong to the landowner, who seldom benefits from trade in mushrooms or from their recreationalvalue. Cultural aspects (tradition, picker-related harms) and economic aspects (costly forestry works,income opportunities) constitute elements of the debate on how to deal with mushroom picking. Througha survey of private forest owners in Catalonia (north-eastern Spain), this paper examines their experienceswith mushroom pickers, the factors shaping their related policy preferences and their willingness toengage in mushroom reserves.The results show broad support for introducing mushroom picking norms. A regulation would allowoutsider pickers to enter private land, but only under certain conditions, i.e. to comply with socio-ecological rules of the area. Among respondents who support the regulation, active land owners whoreport instances of picker-related harm (both tangible and intangible) tend to support the establishmentof a fee system which could be reinvested into forest management. That is also the position of the respon-dents who perceive mushrooms as a private right, i.e. they believe to have a legitimate right to excludeoutsider pickers and, eventually, to raise revenues from that asset. On the contrary, forest owners whoconceive mushroom picking as a free-access activity prefer neither to regulate it nor to charge fees. Theoption to establish a mushroom picking reserve depends on the landholder being a fee-supporter andperceiving instances of harm. Harm, instead, is mainly determined by the perception of congestion ofpickers, which in turn is determined by the mushroom productivity of their forest, their level of pri-vacy protection and their involvement to the primary sector. These findings help policymakers to betterunderstand the logic and sensitivities of forest owners in view of designing mushroom picking policiesthat can effectively solve picker-landowner conflicts