Innovativeness of Japanese forest owners and municipalities regarding the valorization of forest ecosystem services: Quantitative evaluation of mutual influences

The valorization of forest ecosystem services requires actors to innovate and tackle difficulties in realization. We conducted two questionnaire survey series in Japan with forest owners and municipalities—important actors in implementing valorization—to investigate their innovativeness. We measured owners' innovativeness regarding valorization by asking whether they were interested in, planning for, or had implemented four types of valorization: (1) multifunctional payments, (2) habitat payments, (3) non-wood forest products (NWFP) marketing, and (4) forest service industries. Based on spatial autoregressive regression (SAR) analyses of 312 responses, we found that ownership type, age, holding size, and purpose of forest ownership were associated with owners' innovativeness indices. For example, younger owners and the ones with NWFP ownership purpose are more innovative in one or several types of valorization. We also asked municipalities how innovative they were toward using forest environmental transfer tax, a national funding scheme, for implementing or assisting the valorization methods mentioned above. Based on the SAR analyses of 664–670 responses, we identified correlations between innovativeness and several municipal factors such as population size, population changes, areas of private plantation forest ownership, forest ratios, and the importance of agriculture and forestry. Specifically, the coefficients for forest ratio and agriculture/forestry/fishery added value variables were positive in the NWFP model. Relying on the results of the SAR analyses, we evaluated the influences of regional systems of innovation on respondents' innovativeness and found that the influences are statistically and substantially significant.