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The Designing and Marketing of Regulating and Cultural Forest Ecosystem Services: Successes, Failures, Lessons Learnt and Future Perspectives

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A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Economics, Policy, and Social Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 December 2020) | Viewed by 19603

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Davide M. Pettenella

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Guest Editor

Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry, University of Padova, Padua, Italy
Interests: forest economics; forest policy; governance; forest products marketing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Mauro Masiero

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Co-Guest Editor

Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry TESAF, University of Padova | UNIPD, Padova, Italy
Interests: forest economics; forest policy; forest certification; forest ecosystem services; markets for forest products/services; corporate social responsibility; governance of natural resources
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Forest resources are facing challenges driven by changes ranging from climate to demographic and socio-economic trends at both the global and local scales. Although provisioning services—above all wood production—remain a key factor in shaping forest management and the market for forest products, emerging social demand for “new” forest services is playing a more and more relevant role. The need to mitigate climate change by supporting carbon sequestration, as well as to face the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme events and related risks (floods, droughts, wild fires, hydrogeological hazards, etc.), the growing demand to ensure water quality/availability across several competing sectors/users, and the urgency to conserve and enhance valuable habitats and species, represent just a few of the relevant examples of the importance of regulating the services provided or mediated by forest resources. At the same time, the need to fill an increasing gap between (urban) people and natural resources is feeding the demand for multiple cultural services, ranging from tourism and recreation opportunities to landscape aesthetics and from environmental education to green-care initiatives aiming to support human health and wellbeing.

While in the past, regulating and cultural services were supposed to be secured on the backwash of provisioning ones (Kielwasser Theorie), today they are gaining momentum and, in some cases, becoming center stage. This comes with implications for both forest management models, as well as policy, governance, business, and marketing tools. Indeed, despite the emergence of the “ecosystem service” concept and its moving to the mainstream of the environmental policy framework and scientific research agenda in the last 20 years, most of the regulating and cultural services remain externalities and lay outside of the market, thus posing challenges in terms of the development of ad hoc solutions for their successful management, valuation, and marketing.

This Special Issue aims to investigate experiences in the field of the designing and marketing of regulating and cultural forest ecosystem services in order to provide a robust and wide up-to-date picture of the state of the art, while at the same time giving the floor to the presentation and discussion of significant case studies and initiatives. The expected focus is on market-based solutions, as well as business models, organizational schemes, and governance mechanisms at work behind the marketing of regulating and cultural services, in addition to their socio-economic impacts on the markets, society, and forest management. The final aim is to critically present experiences in this field, emphasizing success and failure factors, as well as lessons learnt and expected future developments, in order to inform and shape future decision making and actions within this domain.

Prof. Davide Pettenella
Dr. Mauro Masiero
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Forests is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Cultural ecosystem services
Regulating ecosystem services
Marketing
Forest management
Nature-based solutions
Forest innovations

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

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15 pages, 2042 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Evaluation of a Structure Providing Cultural Ecosystem Services in Forest Recreation: Quantitative Text Analysis of Essays by Participants

by Suguru Hirahara

Forests 2021, 12(11), 1546; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/f12111546 - 09 Nov 2021

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1861

Abstract

Cultural ecosystem services are nonmaterial benefits that individuals acquire from the ecosystem, such as recreation, aesthetic enjoyment, and tourism. The quantification of cultural services is considered difficult to accurately make compared to other forest ecosystem services. Although some studies evaluate cultural services from forest recreation, “simple quantification” based on easy-to-obtain data is criticized for disregarding the local context and missing essential details. Therefore, this study evaluates a structure providing cultural services, and the local or detailed factors missed by simple quantification, while illustrating objective and statistical evidence with careful observations and a comprehension of local society. This study focuses on urban resident participation in natural resource management through recreational activities in Japanese mountain villages, using Fujiwara District, Minakami Town, Japan, as a case study, and by conducting a quantitative text analysis of 424 essays containing participants’ experiences and impressions. Using the software KH Coder, the Jaccard index is used to calculate co-occurrence relationships between frequently used words, visualizing the results in a network diagram. Additionally, several codes are added to keywords that characterize this case, and correlations between each code are examined. From the analysis, we discovered that social factors, such as interaction with comrades and locals, considerably influence participants’ positive emotions. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Designing and Marketing of Regulating and Cultural Forest Ecosystem Services: Successes, Failures, Lessons Learnt and Future Perspectives)

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22 pages, 3396 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Possibilities for Harmonisation between Recreation Services and Their Production within the Forest Sector—A Case Study of Municipal Forest Enterprise Hradec Králové (CZ)

by Radek Jůza, Vilém Jarský, Marcel Riedl, Daniel Zahradník and Luděk Šišák

Forests 2021, 12(1), 13; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/f12010013 - 24 Dec 2020

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2309

Abstract

This paper deals with the possibility of harmonising the needs of society and the possibilities of the forest property manager. The Municipal forest enterprise of the city of Hradec Králové (MLHK) in the Czech Republic (CZ) is an example of this principle, which proves that the intensive development of a recreational service is possible without limiting this principle. The forest enterprise manages 3707 ha of forest in the immediate vicinity of the city with 92,000 inhabitants. The forest enterprise pays the city rent and makes a profit. The data were obtained by analysing the economic data of the surveyed company, the annual observation of the forest attendance, the surveys of the characteristics of the forest visitors and the surveys of selected 16 companies (from seven countries) managing the forests of some European cities. The main results concerning MLHK are as follows: the share of recreational service costs in the total costs of the forestry activities is 19.7%. The recreational services of the forest are financed from 71.5% from revenues from the sale of raw wood, 17.5% from revenues from the sale of sand from its own quarry, 3.9% from revenues from the recreational services and 7.1% from subsidies. The operation of the gravel quarry contributes to the economic result of the forest enterprise roughly by an amount corresponding to the costs of the recreational services. An average annual forest attendance is 243 people/ha. The inhabitants of the city account for 61.5% of the visitors, 20.4% of the visitors live within a distance of up to 30 km, and 18.1% of the visitors live at a distance of more than 30 km. The main results of the survey among the forest enterprises managing the forests of the selected European cities are as follows: the share of costs for the recreational services in the total costs of the forestry activities is 21–72% for cities with a population of over 100,000, and 3–14% for cities with less than 100,000 inhabitants. As a source of financing recreational services, the forest enterprises from mentioned cities with over 100,000 inhabitants, the money especially came from the city budget (70–100%). Forest enterprises from cities under 100,000 inhabitants stated that they fund a recreational service with 95–100% of the revenues from the sale of raw wood. Data on the MLHK show that it is possible to finance a recreational forest service from its own resources if this is the owner’s priority. However, this only applies under certain conditions, such as that, in addition to the income from forest management, there are other sources of income (in this case, sand mining or subsidies from public programmes). If the forest owner did not have these resources, they would have to pay for the recreational service from their own other resources (e.g., from the city budget). Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Designing and Marketing of Regulating and Cultural Forest Ecosystem Services: Successes, Failures, Lessons Learnt and Future Perspectives)

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17 pages, 1882 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Knowledge Production for Resilient Landscapes: Experiences from Multi-Stakeholder Dialogues on Water, Food, Forests, and Landscapes

by Anna Tengberg, Malin Gustafsson, Lotta Samuelson and Elin Weyler

Forests 2021, 12(1), 1; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/f12010001 - 22 Dec 2020

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2949

Abstract

Landscape-wide approaches integrating agriculture, forestry, energy, and water are considered key to address complex environmental problems and to avoid trade-offs. The objective of this paper is to analyse how knowledge production through multi-stakeholder dialogues on water, landscapes, forests, and agriculture can inform governance and the management of landscapes. Multi-stakeholder learning dialogues and platforms (MSPs) were established related to water and natural resources management, complemented by targeted reviews, to establish a shared understanding of the drivers of change and impacts on the hydrology of landscapes and ecosystem services. The MSP dialogues illustrate the need to address water as an integral part of landscape management and governance to achieve the wide range of the Sustainable Development Goals related to water and food security, climate action, life on land, as well as sustainable production and consumption, equality, and strong institutions. The co-production of knowledge through MSPs contributes to continuous learning that informs adaptive management of water flows in landscapes, above and below ground, as well as in the atmosphere. It helps to build a shared understanding of system dynamics and integrate knowledge about hydrology and water flows into policy recommendations. Co-production of knowledge also contributes to stakeholder participation at different levels, inclusiveness, and transparency, and to water stewardship. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Designing and Marketing of Regulating and Cultural Forest Ecosystem Services: Successes, Failures, Lessons Learnt and Future Perspectives)

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15 pages, 792 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Drivers and Frequency of Forest Visits: Results of a National Survey in the Czech Republic

by Miroslava Šodková, Ratna Chrismiari Purwestri, Marcel Riedl, Vilém Jarský and Miroslav Hájek

Forests 2020, 11(4), 414; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/f11040414 - 07 Apr 2020

Cited by 13 | Viewed by 2233

Abstract

The general objective of the study was to assess the main drivers for visiting the forest and the frequency of the visits in the Czech Republic. A nationwide collection of data of the sociological research as part of The Market & Media & Lifestyle Research Project was carried out every year in the Czech Republic under the licensed cooperation with Kantar Media. The project is unique by the large scope of the questions in the questionnaires and by the high number of respondents. A total of 8794 Czech inhabitants aged 12 years and above from all the regions were involved in the survey in 2018. Information about the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of all the respondents were obtained. In the closed questions, the respondents reported the frequency of the forest visits and its drivers. The main driver for visiting the forest was just to go for a walk or just to enjoy the outdoors, especially during their holidays or weekends, amounting to 79% of the inhabitants. Meditation and relaxation as well as sport in the forest, were also considered as important motives for forest recreation. On the contrary, 95% of the visitors did not practice game hunting, although game has a long tradition in the Czech Republic. Improvement on managing the forest for recreation should focus on participatory forest management to find a consensus between the public and forest stakeholders. Common decisions may help set up forest recreational goals with positive impacts on forest ecosystem services. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Designing and Marketing of Regulating and Cultural Forest Ecosystem Services: Successes, Failures, Lessons Learnt and Future Perspectives)

Review

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30 pages, 2619 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceReview

Forest and Wellbeing: Bridging Medical and Forest Research for Effective Forest-Based Initiatives

by Ilaria Doimo, Mauro Masiero and Paola Gatto

Forests 2020, 11(8), 791; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/f11080791 - 22 Jul 2020

Cited by 62 | Viewed by 9603

Abstract

Research Highlights: This review gives an overview of existing literature on the emerging topic of human wellbeing-forest contact nexus and provides a preliminary framework linking forests to wellbeing by highlighting key variables affecting this relationship. Background and Objectives: Existing literature reveals the psychological, physiological and social wellbeing benefits of contact with forest ecosystems; however, the role of forests in this relationship remains largely unexplored. The objectives of this review are twofold: (i) to provide an overview of the contributions of forest experiences to human wellbeing and the related interplay with forest ecosystems and (ii) to identify knowledge gaps to inform future research and systematize information available for forest managers and planners to support the development of effective forest-based initiatives. Materials and Methods: A scoping review was performed with a five-phase method integrating a systematic approach on Scopus, Web of Science and PubMed databases and snowball search. Studies were analyzed using a descriptive-analytical method. Results: Overall, 93 papers were included in the review. These are mainly from health-related sciences providing limited information for forest managers, planners and practitioners. Four main underlying variables of the forest-wellbeing relationship are identified: interaction, forest features, sensorial dimension of the forest and individual traits and reactions. Conclusions: Forest-based initiatives provide good opportunities for supporting public health and time spent in contact with forests seems to have a “health-bonus”. Whether and to what extent forest management can contribute to this is still poorly investigated. There is the need to better study causal relationships between specific forest features, type of interactions, frequency and “dose” of experiences, individual reactions and needs and wellbeing effects to maximize benefits from forest-based initiatives. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Designing and Marketing of Regulating and Cultural Forest Ecosystem Services: Successes, Failures, Lessons Learnt and Future Perspectives)

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