Changing forest stakeholders’ perception of ecosystem services with linguistic nudging

Abstract

This paper explores whether the perceptions of forest owners and professionals could be nudged towards more sustainable management practices by adjusting a policy text’s metaphorical content. Recent research has demonstrated a link between information interventions and preference change, but there is a need to further explore individuals’ reactions to information on forest-based ecosystem services and to link these to the design of policy instruments. We contribute to narrowing this gap by nudging the content of a policy text comparing rotation forest management (RFM) and continuous cover forestry (CCF), and exposing it to forest stakeholders. The research is carried out in Finland, the so-called ‘forest nation’ of Europe, whose economy and culture is closely tied to forests. The results highlight a deep-rooted opinion divide between Finnish forest owners and professionals: the professionals reacted significantly more negatively towards policy text emphasising continuous cover practice than forest owners. Our results support the use of linguistic nudging as a complement to other policy instruments, but they also highlight the challenges of using one-fits-all approaches to make policies more palatable. In our study, the stakeholders’ different reaction to nudge was also explained by their age, and type and degree of prior knowledge on forest management.