Non-industrial private forest owners' attitudes towards the operational environment of forestry - a multinominal logit model analysis

The aim of the present study was to relate the attitudes, characteristics a nd forest management decisions of private forest owners to concepts of stra tegic management, and by this means, to achieve support for the use of comm on strategic management approaches in forestry. Non-industrial private fore st (NIPF) owners' forestry business units (BUs) were grouped into four stra tegic groups (Stars, Cash cows, Wildcats and Dogs), according to the McKins ey's matrix. This grouping was based on the forest owners' attitudes toward s the internal and external operational environments of forestry. Then, the groups were identified by means of a multinominal logit modeling approach that used forest-owner and forest-holding characteristics as explanatory va riables. The differences in forestry behavior between the strategic groups were analyzed. The modeling results showed that forest-owner and forest-hol ding characteristics were in a logical relationship to the basic definition s of the used strategic groups. The behavior of the strategic groups was in accordance with strategies suggested in the tenets of strategic management . The results of this study are supportive of more extensive utilization of common strategic management approaches in forestry. However, the character istics that make the forest different from other factors of production may require some modifications to be made to these approaches. (C) 2001 Elsevie r Science B.V. All rights reserved.