Changing forest stakeholders’ perception of ecosystem services with linguistic nudging

Abstract

Forest owners and professionals are key in facilitating transition to sustainable forest management as they can influence the processes of future forest practices and use. Recently, an emerging literature has examined the effects that viewing different types of information may have on stakeholder perceptions in the context of forest management. These studies have demonstrated a link between information interventions and preference change, but only to some degree. Therefore, there is a need to further explore individuals’ reactions to information on forest-based (ES) and to link these reactions to the design of policy instruments.

Contributing to this gap, we explore whether Finnish forest owners’ and forestry professionals’ perceptions could be nudged towards more sustainable management by adjusting a policy text’s metaphorical content. In Finland, the official instructions recommend even-aged rotation forest management (RFM). Yet, owners and professionals have flexibility in choosing their management practices, and they could, for example, apply continuous-cover forest (CCF) practices, which in some areas and contexts have been shown to offer more ES and yield significantly less negative impacts on biodiversity than RFM [1].

We set up a nationwide survey, gathering 2113 responses from private forest owners and 1452 from forest professionals. The survey included a questionnaire collecting background information and the nudge. In the nudge part, the participants were asked to read a short text written by an expert on various aspects related to RFM and CCF. We designed four versions of the text presented, each of them with a different metaphorical emphasis, either business-as-usual, neutral, minor favouring towards CCF and major emphasis towards CCF. Each participant read one version and was then asked to rate the preference (worth striving for), plausibility (convincing, feels real, realistic) and understandability of the text (clear, coherent, well written).

We investigated the effect of respondent characteristics and the effect of nudge on reported stance on CCF. Professionals provided more negative feedback on CCF than owners and this more negative as one increased the nudging in favor of CCF, while the forest owners’ opinion became more positive. The results also indicate that age and gender are determining variables in the nudge. Age affects in different manners between the stakeholder groups. Women, regardless of being professionals or owners, showed higher stance on CCF than men. Our study highlights the existing opinion divide towards CCF between key private forest owners and forest professionals in Finland. The opposite reaction of the stakeholder groups to the nudge highlights challenges of one-fits-all policy instruments to make policies more palatable.

1. Peura, M., et al. Continuous cover forestry is a cost-efficient tool to increase multifunctionality of boreal production forests in Fennoscandia. Biol. Conserv. 217 (2018).