Masters Theses

Date of Award

5-1993

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Agricultural Economics

Major Professor

Burton C. English

Committee Members

Park, Wells

Abstract

The vast majority of nonindustrial private forestland in Tennessee, and much of the nation, is currently unmanaged. This results in a reduction of the quality of timber and other forest resources such as wildlife habitat and water quality. In the 1990 Farm Bill, Congress instituted the Stewardship Incentive Program, believing that management of these types of lands would be greatly beneficial to the nation as a whole. Apparently, owners do not perceive enough personal benefit from this type of forest management. Therefore, incentives may be necessary to induce landowners to practice management of their land.

Historically, the federal government has concentrated its efforts to promote improved farm practices on the use of monetary incentives. Consistent with past programs, the major incentive offered in the Stewardship Incentive Program for a landowner is that the government will share a percentage of the startup costs. However, participation in previous forestry programs using similar incentives has been chronically low, as evidenced by data from the Forestry Incentives Program and the Conservation Reserve Program.

It is the purpose of this study to determine the likely effect of cost-share incentives on participation in the Stewardship Incentive Program as well as to identify other factors that may contribute to participation. This information may prove useful in considering the most effective implementation strategy of the Stewardship Incentive Program.

In this study an indirect utility function is used to determine the probability an individual will choose to participate as well as to identify the relationship between that choice and certain attributes of the individual. Analysis of this choice as a function of economic, physical, and behavioral factors results in a qualitative model, specifically, a binary choice model since the dependent variable is dichotomous in nature and represents the participate - not participate decision.

In order to determine the landowner's willingness to participate in a stewardship program in Tennessee, 4000 surveys were mailed to randomly selected owners of 100 acres or more. In the survey, participation is directly determined in a hypothetical situation and various cost share amounts were offered to different individuals. In addition to the effect of cost on participation the questionnaire was designed to identify owner characteristics in the following three categories:

1. demographic, socioeconomic;

2. attitudes and beliefs regarding conservation, information, and various goals of the program including timber, wildlife/fisheries, water quality, recreation, wetlands, aesthetic value;

3. attributes of the farm;

A logit procedure is used to estimate the model. Measures of the goodness of fit indicate the model fit the data fairly well. Cost to the owner of participating is found to be significant, however, the variables representing the attitudes and opinions of the respondent toward the goals of the program prove substantially more influential per unit on the probability of participating. This information may be valuable to decision makers faced with deciding the most effective method of implementing programs such as the Stewardship Incentive Program.

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