Forest owner or shareholder? Ownership feelings in a jointly-owned forest

Abstract

ABSTRACT Parcelisation-induced fragmentation is a common development trend in forest ownership in many Western countries. In Finland, the idea of a jointly-owned forest (JOF) has been introduced to facilitate the effective management of forest resource in parcelised and fragmented forest owning contexts. A JOF is an area of combined holdings intended for the practice of sustainable forestry for the benefit of the shareholders. The establishment of JOFs alters the core idea of ownership as it diminishes individual forest owners’ ability to control their holdings. We suggest that the feelings of ownership are important, yet under researched, aspects in the development and operation of JOFs. In this study, we focus on these ownership feelings by asking what kind of owner types are associated with JOFs. We build a qualitative typology of four owner types which we named active owners, investors, legacy fosterers, and detached owners. Our study contributes to the discussion on JOFs by showing that shared ownership can incorporate a variety of owner types with different ownership feelings. We claim that the need to understand these different owner types is important to facilitate the development of tools and policy instruments that will contribute to the establishment and management of jointly-owned forests.