Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

This is a study on the outcome of the Swedish Forest Agency´s mission to provide individual advice to private land owners about precommercial thinning. The study was conducted in Sala municipality and included forest owners that had received private individual advice from a Swedish Forest Agency consultant as well as forest owners that had not received individual advice. One of the central issues was to make comparisons between these two groups. The survey was carried out by telephone interviews combined with a smaller field study. The questions were designed to provide information about to what degree the forest owners had been affected by the advice and if there had been a change in the way in which precommercial thinning was performed.

In terms of the amount of precommercial thinning that had been carried out, no statistically significant differences were found between the two groups. The field study indicated that in some cases less precommerical thinning had been performed in the field than originally stated by the property owner.

Additional information obtained during the telephone survey indicated that the private individual advice had influenced forest owners in terms of how they performed precommercial thinning. Despite no statistically significant differences between the two studied groups regarding the amount of precommercial thinning performed, several forest owners answered that they would not have carried out their precommercial thinning operations at all if they had not been contacted and offered private individual advice.