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Harvard Forest REU Symposium Abstract 2008

• Title: Private Land, Public Landscape: How Social Networks Affect Landowners’ Decisions
• Author: Emma Snellings (Gettysburg College)
• Abstract:

  The decisions of wood landowners in Massachusetts often dictate the state of the landscape. Massachusetts, and the Northeast, is a patchwork of ownership, thus any decisions on the landscape level have many players involved. Whether to harvest timber or not on one’s land is a decision every landowner must make, and is one that is could be understood better. Landowners’ social networks positively impact their decisions about timber harvesting and their satisfaction with those decisions. Seventeen interviews were conducted with land owners who had recently completed a timber sale. Using a linear regression, it was found that age, income level and number of people talked to before the timber sale all were significant factors in the level of satisfaction with the timber sale. It was also found that satisfaction was negatively correlated with talking to a forester, and positively correlated when the contact was a relative. Landowners’ social networks seem to play an important role when it comes to decision satisfaction. However, further research is needed to see if a landowner’s social network is the limiting factor in their decision making process.

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