Our research investigates how social influence impacts forest management in the Western Upper Peninsula (WUP) of Michigan. Non-industrial private forest owners (NIPFOs) own approximately 40% of the forestland in the WUP. NIPFO activity impacts forest sustainability in a very complex way. Individual NIPFOs are too small to significantly impact the landscape on their own but collectively NIPFOs can cause serious damage, such as creating large gaps in the forest harmful to wildlife and plant diversity. NIPFOs are also difficult to regulate because their land-use activities are legal and it is nearly impossible to design or enforce a law that makes a legal land-use activity illegal once a certain number of others take the same action at the same time. This is why voluntary incentive programs (VIPs) were created to coordinate NIPFOs. VIPs use incentives (tax breaks, free technical assistance, etc.) to encourage forest owners to adopt sustainable forest management practices. Since they are voluntary, VIPs can only work well when enrollment rates are high but VIPs in the WUP are consistently under-enrolled so their ability to impact forest sustainability remains low. Our study explores why this is happening. We conducted interviews with NIPFOs in the WUP to understand how they make land-use decisions, where they get their forest management information, and what they think about existing VIPs. We also interviewed leaders of local land management associations to ask about efforts to enroll NIPFOs in VIPs or to encourage best management practices.

Our study found that many NIPFOs were simply unaware of VIPs and tended to get forest management information from informal sources (friends, neighbors, and family members). Interviewees claimed that family traditions (i.e., keeping one’s land in the family and managing forests as had always been done) and local community norms (i.e., a social obligation to keep the forest “looking good”) had the greatest impact on forest management decisions. Interviewees most likely to claim they owned their forest for financial gain were also more likely to be enrolled in the most active VIP in the region (the Commercial Forest Reserve program which manages lands for timber production). Our findings show that social influence plays an important role in determining ownership goals, preferred forest management practices, and awareness of existing VIPs. This is important because current research assumes that financial considerations mostly drive forest management decisions. Our study contributes to research and policy making on this topic by ensuring that adequate attention is paid to the role of social influence on VIP design and success. Our study demonstrates how decentralized self-regulation occurs among NIPFOs and highlights critical sources of management information that could be utilized to encourage more sustainable forest management practices. Finally, our study uncovers an important disconnect between land management associations and NIPFOs that must be addressed in order to increase VIP enrollment rates as a means to achieve a more sustainable forest. These issues have largely been overlooked in current VIP research on NIPFOs.   

Our study benefits society as a whole by contributing to the long-run goal of improving forest sustainability. This goal can only be accomplished if efforts to coordinate NIPFOs align with the mechanisms driving their forest management decisions. Our study found that this is currently not happening in the WUP. Interviews with leaders of local land management associations showed that current efforts to coordinate NIPFOs were largely ignoring how social influence impacts forest management. Instead, financial constraints were claimed to be the greatest barrier to success. Budget shortfalls were forcing state and local agencies to adopt economically efficient but less success...

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