Understanding Forest Owners in a Mediterranean ContextConstructing theory through descriptive and interpretational analysis : A study case in Catalonia

Resumen

The management of privately owned forests is a topic that has been widely written about, largely because it is central to land planning and the administration of forest policy in many areas. The level of involvement of forest owners in forest management is lower than might be desired. Many forest owners do not undertake any kind of activity related to wood production or to any other objective on their property. This problem, however, is not specific to Catalonia; forest owners all over Europe are changing the activities they undertake in relation to forest management (e.g Boon, Meilby et al. 2004; Kvarda 2004; Ziegenspeck, Härdter et al. 2004; Hogl, Pregernig et al. 2005; Schraml 2005). Therefore, the goal of this research study is to contribute to the body of knowledge of how the forest owners and forest managers engage with the management of their properties. Involving forest owners in some kind of forest management poses a challenge to policymakers. Existing or new forest policy tools should increase their effectiveness by better adapting to the needs of forest owners, and a prerequisite for this is to improve the understanding of how forest owners make decisions regarding their forest lands. Previous studies have taken several intellectual and methodological approaches to the subject, but in general there is a predominant use of hypothetical-deductive, positivistic and naturalistic methods. The methodology of those studies also tends to be extensive, as many of them are statistically-based and with large sample bases (Deane 2004). In contrast, the design of this project is inductive, constructionist and based in a qualitative methodology.