Adaptation to climate change : Forest landowners’ risk attitude and perception

PI: Marielle Brunette (UMR 356 Laboratoire d’Économie Forestière — LEF)

Collaboration:
Anne Stenger (BETA, Strasbourg; LEF, Nancy)Marc Hanewinkel (Chair of Forestry Economics and Forest Planning, University of Freiburg, Germany)
Rasoul Yousefpour (Chair of Forestry Economics and Forest Planning, University of Freiburg, Germany)

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Context — The principal concern currently facing European forest landowners is how extreme weather events pose production risks that must be factored into forest management decisions. While certain preventative measures exist to provide coverage for such events, such as insurance, the frequency and intensity of these extreme natural events are expected to increase as a direct result of climate changes associated with global warming. To help forest landowners respond to these increased risks, several adaptation strategies exist: reduce rotation length, reduce density, and increase controlled burnings, etc. To effectively manage these adaptation strategies, forest landowners first need to be convinced that climate change poses a serious threat to their forests. Identifying specific factors which act to raise forest landowners’ risk perception has become a major issue when it comes to implementing adaptation strategies. Similarly, it has become evident that gaining a better understanding of forest owners’ attitude toward risk is essential for effective analysis of these adaptation strategies.

Objective — In this context, our objective is to jointly analyze private forest landowners’ attitudes and perceptions of risk in the context of climate change and adaptation strategies.

Approach — Our approach will be to establish one common questionnaire for both French and German private forest landowners which will be distributed by post.

Expected results and impacts — Despite the fact that the stakes are high, comprehensive economic knowledge of forest landowners’ risk attitudes and perceptions is currently poorly represented in literature, particularly in France. Risk attitude and risk perception are two major determining factors which drive forest landowners’ risk management decisions. A more thorough characterization of these forest landowners would allow for coherent adaptation strategies to be implemented in response to climate change.