Assessing the potential of the ‘typical forest enterprise approach’ for research in forest economics and application in policy making: A comparative analysis based on five national case studies

Abstract

Small-scale private forest enterprises (SSPFEs) play an important role in the forest sector in many EU member states. However, unlike large-scale or publicly-owned forest enterprises, they are often not included in statistical surveys. This results in a lack of elementary basic economic data on wood production on SSPFEs, which is a prerequisite for effective policy implementation and impact assessment across the EU. To address this data gap, this pilot study examines the potential application of a modified “Typical Enterprise Approach” (TEA) to forestry for the first time for SSPFE in Austria, Finland, Germany, Slovenia, and Sweden. In the TEA, models of enterprises are constructed, reflecting the typical conditions and management practices in a specific region or country. For our study, extensive literature research and expert interviews were selected to identify typical companies and depict their wood production system with key performance indicators. Our findings show, that despite sharing EU membership and common political and legal frameworks, data availability, typical enterprise characterization and cost and revenue structures vary across the five countries. Notwithstanding further need of refinement, the TEA has the potential to serve as a key source for understanding different wood production systems and for providing socio-economic key figures. By providing comprehensive and consistent data from typical enterprises, a refined TEA can help to estimate the geographical variation, identify best practices and contribute to enhancing the sustainability of SSPFEs. Therefore, a permanent establishment of an international TEA network in forestry would be highly beneficial.