Survey of Family Forest Owners Regarding Invasive Insects in the Connecticut River Watershed 2017

Forest insects have significant direct impacts on forest ecosystems; they are also generating new risks, uncertainties, and opportunities for forest landowners. Our research objective is to understand: (1) whether and how insect infestations are shifting land-use regimes in New England by altering human decision-making, (2) how these changes to human decisions may affect regional forest ecosystems and the provisioning of select ecosystem services, and (3) how subsequent changes to forest ecosystems, in turn, affect landowners. The dataset is a result of gathering information from a random sample of family forest owners (FFOs) in the Connecticut River Watershed; FFOs own approximately half of the private forestland in the region. We collected information on characteristics and perceptions of these FFOs as well as their intentions for their land if faced with the presence or threat of invasive forest insects. To better understand FFO intentions, contingent behavior questions populate the conjoint analysis format of the questionnaire. These are the foundational data that form our further efforts to simulate the impacts of insect dynamics and landowner behavior on regional forest ecosystems, including forest carbon stores, forest structure and composition, and timber yields. One of our overarching hypotheses is that forest land-use change in response to insects will have greater near-term ecological consequences than climate change or insects by themselves.