Participation and compensation claims in voluntary forest landscape conservation: The case of the Ruka-Kuusamo tourism area, Finland

The expansion of nature-based tourism on private land requires new mechanisms to coordinate tourism industry and commercial forestry interests. This attribute-based contingent valuation study elaborated the supply side of potential payments for ecosystem services (PES) mechanism named Landscape and Recreational Values Trading (LRVT), proposed to enhance the provision of amenity values in privately owned forests located in tourism and recreation areas. Using a mail survey data set, we analyzed forest owners’ willingness to participate in LRVT and the related compensation claims in the Ruka-Kuusamo area, Finland. We found that more restrictive rules regarding forest management practices decrease the probability of participating and increase forest owners’ compensation claims in LRVT. Furthermore, forest owners seem to claim more compensation if, instead of private negotiations, competitive tendering is used to make contracts. Moreover, besides the protection of landscape values, biodiversity protection may be a motive for participation. This indicates that, in addition to improved landscape quality, respondents gain personal benefits from enhanced biodiversity in their own forests. The results can help in designing and implementing a future payment mechanism for the provision of forest landscape and recreational values in terms of how to proceed and whom marketing and recruiting efforts should target.