Preferences of private forest owners regarding membership in Forest Owner Associations (FOAs)

The social and cultural changes that have been taking place in European societies for over 30 years are also having an impact on forests and forestry. In Poland, there is still no dynamic development joint forms of management in agriculture including forest land. One of the main reasons for this situation seems to be the lack of activity in the still dormant social capital of rural residents in this area as well as insufficient knowledge about the best solutions. The purpose of this study was to determine the preferences of private forest owners regarding membership in Forest Owners Associations (FOA) as a case study for Poland. The objective was achieved by directly surveying a nationally representative sample of Polish farmers who own forests. The surveyed forest owners were offered to choose one of the four defined models of organising forest owners' associations in Poland with a fifth option allowing them to make their own proposal. The obtained distribution of preferences was analysed using two log-linear models. The models made it possible to explain the differences in the frequency of respondents' statements on the proposed models of forest association organisation in relation to selected content variables (answers to three closed questions of the survey) and variables from the respondents' statements (age, gender and education). The survey was conducted on a representative large nationwide random sample of forest landowners who are farmers (1003 questionnaires). The computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI) method was used with a standardised interview questionnaire containing 16 factual ques- tions and a survey metric. This publication provides the results that indicate the preferred organisational form of asso- ciations in Poland as well as the results of a random typology of forest owners (farmers) based on the preferred organisational form of associations while taking into account aspects of wood commodity management and the social variables of owners (gender, age and education). Based on the analysis carried out, it can be concluded that the most advantageous solution would be the establishment of an association of owners in a municipality cooperating at the district (powiat) level in Poland which would allow forest owners to take various initiatives at the municipal (local) level, including the joint sale of wood.