Social Network Survey of Forest Landowners in New Hampshire and Vermont 2010

Forests provide invaluable services, and nationally a significant portion of them are owned by millions of individual, private decision makers. Butler (2008) reports that the vast majority of owners (92%, representing 87% of all family forest lands) make management decisions for their land on their own, with a very small minority relying on the advice of professional foresters. Nationally, Butler (2008) goes on to report that 4 % of family forest owners (representing 17% of family forest land) have a professionally prepared management plan for their lands. It is clear that family forests are important, yet millions of owners are apparently not making decisions on the basis of professional advice. Our goal was to improve our understanding of who landowners seek information from when making decisions about their forestland. More specifically, our objective was to explore the possible role of egocentric social networks that landowners may rely upon for information when making a decision. Can we estimate their composition, the possible role of professionals, and the nature of the relationships, in terms of involvement, helpfulness, and trust? Finally, we explored landowner egocentric networks in two similar and adjacent states (Vermont and New Hampshire) that have different programmatic approaches to reaching landowners. Do these result in different ways that landowners acquire information? Using two different approaches through a mail survey methodology, we assessed the extent to which private woodland owners are connected to other people, the degree to which they are considered information sources, and the nature of their decision making behavior. Respondents consistently report valuable connections to non-professionals. They similarly report nominal contact to public foresters, whose role is to inspire prudent forest stewardship on privately held lands. This minimal contact is consistent in two different states with rather different programmatic goals (e.g., education and outreach focus in NH vs. technical assistance in VT). Paradoxically, those respondents who do have contact with public foresters value their involvement and trust them highly. Our results suggest, however, that there currently exist informal and largely unrecognized connections and networks that woodland owners tap and place importance upon. Improving the decision making of private woodland owners, and shifting it from reactive to more proactive in nature, based on a full understanding of available information and alternatives, seems possible if means are developed to harness the potential power of these invisible connections.