Perceived climate change risks among other risks affecting private forest owners in a top-down decision-making process

Abstract Forest management adaptation to climate change is a matter of forest type, disturbances regime, and forest owners’ behavior face the climate change issue. Knowing factors that determine people respond to climate change challenges is essential to explaining their perceptions of climate change adaptation. We have conducted astudy in North-Eastern Romania applying the Model of Private Proactive Adaptation to Climate Change. The aim was to identify private forest owners’ perceptions about climate change and forest management threats and constraints and to analyse what variables differentiate private forest owners’ adaptation behavior. The PFOs with higher education were aware of the forest regime regarding private management. They knew how to assess climate change risk, while those with secondary education were the only interest was obtaining wood. The PFOs’ risk experience played an important role in adaptation. The perceptions and beliefs of PFOs were strongly influenced by socio-economic status, and they believe in climate change effects on forests but not on theirs. Adaption has become less urgent because forest management problems blur climate change beliefs. Assuming that the Romanian PFOs’ perceptions and beliefs about climate change will follow the European trend, they will want to improve their knowledge about climate change impacts and adaptive measures. Therefore, aggregating the interested PFOs, creating suitable communication channels, and organizing trainings on forest management adaptation to climate change will be needed to prevent this need.