Land Use Policy 36 (2014) 351–360 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Land Use Policy jou rn al hom epage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol Private landowners’ approaches to planting and managing forests in the UK: What’s the evidence? Anna Lawrence a,∗ , Norman Dandy b a Forest Research, Northern Research Station, Roslin, Midlothian EH25 9SY, United Kingdom b Forest Research, Alice Holt Lodge, Farnham, Surrey GU10 4LH, United Kingdom a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 4 July 2013 Received in revised form 29 August 2013 Accepted 2 September 2013 Keywords: Advisory systems Decision-making Forest policy Land owners Non-industrial private forests Woodland creation a b s t r a c t Woodland expansion and sustainable forest management are key features of forest policy in the UK. Because a large majority of land and forests is owned privately, these policies need the involvement of private landowners. Studies of owners’ attitudes and decisions in the UK are at a disadvantage as there is no complete database of land or forest ownership. This paper is based on a Rapid Evidence Assessment which identified 42 relevant studies. The predominant narrative reflects a low level of inter- est and management activity. There are many exceptions to this, and land management decisions are more differentiated within the socio-cultural, multipurpose landscape than has perhaps been previously acknowledged. A wide cultural gap between farming and forestry is often noted, in contrast to the inter- national literature. Many woodland owners see themselves as managing their woodlands, in contrast to official perceptions and statistics. The evidence also reports generally negative attitudes towards wood- land creation. The predominant policy tools are grants and advice. Grant uptake across England, Wales and Scotland is not currently as high as governments would like. A combination of amount offered, fit with owners’ objectives, amount of paperwork and interaction with professionals are cited to explain low grant uptake. Information and advice is an important and neglected factor in the equation. A focus on both content and process of interactions with advisors, knowledge exchange and application, and outcomes, is lacking in the UK. Given the centrality of private landowners in delivering public policy, we see a need to go beyond this body of evidence and focus on innovative approaches, including engagement via social networks, knowledge exchange processes which build on existing relations and link with land managers’ existing objectives, and the contextualisation of woodland within the wider land use sector. Crown Copyright © 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction The delivery of forest policy through privately owned forests is a significant challenge in countries where much of the forest is owned by non-state landowners. Worldwide, about 18% of forest is privately owned, but there is great variation between regions, and in terms of the balance between individual, community or industrial ‘private’ ownerships (FAO, 2010). In the USA, for exam- ple, 35% of forestland is owned by more than 10 million private ‘non-industrial’ owners (Ma et al., 2012a). In Sweden the figure is 50% and rising (Fischer et al., 2010). In Great Britain, 67% of the forest area is privately owned (Forestry Commission, 2012). Understanding the decisions and behaviour of private landown- ers is therefore a critical task, and in some regions has received substantial attention. It constitutes the second most widely studied ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 131 445 8716. E-mail addresses: anna.lawrence@forestry.gsi.gov.uk (A. Lawrence), norman.dandy@forestry.gsi.gov.uk (N. Dandy). area of forest economics (Amacher et al., 2003), in addition to a wide range of other disciplines. The majority of studies is from the USA, followed by Scandinavia and they take a range of approaches. These can be summarised as: (a) understanding perceptions and explana- tions of individual’s woodland management decisions (Davis and Fly, 2010; Elands and Praestholm, 2008), (b) understanding the attitudes of woodland owners and managers towards public pol- icy tools such as regulation and incentives (Aguilar and Saunders, 2011; Janota and Broussard, 2008; Schaaf and Broussard, 2006), and (c) assessing the outcomes of such policy tools, including behavioural (e.g. tree planting) and physical (increase in forest area) (Jacobson et al., 2009a,b; Kilgore et al., 2007). A consistent theme driving such studies is the sense that private owners are not meeting the aspirations of forest policy, a theme that has been framed as ‘the perennial family forest problem’ (Straka, 2011). Language used by researchers reflects an implicit standard: management is seen as ‘suboptimal’, there is a need for owners to ‘properly manage’ (Ma et al., 2012a; Straka, 2011). In Ohio one study found that only 4% of forest landowners have a formal management plan for their forests, and fewer than 14% seek any advice before 0264-8377/$ – see front matter. Crown Copyright © 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2013.09.002