title: An empirical evaluation of private landowner participation in voluntary forest conservation programs.
abstract: The use of voluntary programs targeting resource conservation on private land has become increasingly prevalent in environmental policy. Voluntary programs potentially offer significant benefits over regulatory and market-based approaches. This article examines the factors affecting landowner participation in voluntary forest conservation programs using a combination of parcel-level GIS and remotely sensed data and semi-structured interviews of landowners in Monroe County, Indiana. A logistic regression model is applied to determine the probability of participation based on landowner education, membership in other non-forest voluntary programs, dominant land use activity, parcel size, distance from urban center, land resource portfolios, and forest cover. Both land use activity and the spatial configuration of a landholder's resource portfolio are found to be statistically significant with important implications for the design and implementation of voluntary programs.
authors.affiliation: Political Science Department, University of Nevada-Reno, Reno, NV 89557-0060, USA. kauneck@unr.edu
authors.forename: Derek
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kauneckis
authors.forename: Abigail M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: York
mesh_terms: D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D003625:Data Collection; D016468:Forestry; D040362:Geographic Information Systems; D006801:Humans; D007196:Indiana; D010067:Ownership; D017149:Private Sector