Finnish forest owner objectives as indicators for a diversifying use of forests on the road to a bioeconomy

Non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners are important forest ecosystem service providers and users. Along with the structural and general lifestyle changes of owners, their forest ownership objectives have become more diverse, strongly emphasizing intangible forest values alongside timber production. Therefore, NIPF owners and their versatile forest ownership objectives are a potential source of information for exploring the untapped future potential that could help the forest sector to retain its future viability on the road towards a bioeconomy. This doctoral thesis aims to understand the drivers of demand for new forestry services and forest-based business opportunities from the perspective of NIPF owner objectives and forest meanings. Objectives and forest meanings are examined from methodological, sociodemographic and NIPF owner sustainable lifestyle perspectives, leading to more general examination of NIPF owner perceptions of future utilization prospects of forests and the forest sector. Thus, the objective of the thesis is to build a more in-depth understanding of NIPF owner objectives and to examine how this information could be used in the development and marketing of forestry services and other forest-related products and services. The findings present a way to systematically analyse the objectives of forest ownership and also illustrate how certain segments of forest owners value aesthetics and biodiversity conservation over a traditional monetary value orientation. The results also indicate that the owners with the highest sustainable consumption orientation place a greater emphasis on multiple benefits of forests than owners who have a lower such orientation. The findings show that the future value creation of forests will be based on multiple aspects, and the widening of perspective beyond raw material dominance in the utilization of forests is important. Thus, recognizing customer pressure towards more diversified forestry services would be essential in meeting the versatile needs of forest owners but also from the perspective of developing new forest-based businesses.