Motives for Sustainability Certification—Private Certified Forest Owners’ Perspectives

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Are the methods adequately described?

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Comment

Our reply

The manuscript is aimed to interesting topic related to small private forest owners’ motives and experiences of being certified. The paper requires a minor revision and corrections to improve the overall structure and readability. I have following questions and suggestions for the authors:

L34-35:

In a sentence “A number of Swedish forest owners are involved in forest certification for smallholders” I suggest that the authors list the type of certificate that dominates nationally in the following sentences!  

A sentence about the dominating certification schemes has been added.

… “through Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and/or Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).

In introduction chapter, did I miss disposition paragraph?

A disposition paragraph has been added.

“The paper starts with an introduction to forest certification and environmental responsibility. In chapter two the materials and method used for data collection is described. Chapter three presents the findings of this study followed by discussion and conclusions in chapter four and five.”

L92:

I suggest the authors to change the title of chapter 1.2 in the sense “Contribution of forest certification to the environmental responsibility “

Chapter title for 1.2 has been changed to “Forest certification and contribution to environmental responsibility”.

L191-194:

I suggest the authors to delete the text form line 191 to 194 (it is redundant and has already been mentioned in the previous two chapters)!

Text that is redundant has been deleted.

In the data collection chapter, the sampling method used to select the forest owner from the contact list is not clearly stated (a snowball, a simple random sample or something else). I ask the authors to clarify this in one to two sentences and include the same in the paper.

Thank you for this comment this needs to be clarified! The selection of participants was based on the aim to find variation among factors like property size, gender, and whether the owners are living on the estate and has forestry as main income. In this way a variation of aspect and different perspectives important for the study could be illustrated.

This can also be described as a sampling with maximum variation as the researcher ensures that the sampling represents the investigated criteria’s while aiming at variation in answers.

“The sampling was based on a procedure to find variation among participants in relation to factors like property size, gender, and whether the owners are living on the estate and has forestry as main income. This can also be described as a sampling for maximum variation that aims at finding participants that reflects different perspectives based on the investigated criteria”.

L308:

on the right side of the Figure 1 it would be good to link the number of repetitions, i.e., the visual representation of the arrow thickness, with the descriptive strength of the connection (e.g. weak, medium and strong connection). Easier to explain causal relationships, and easier for readers to follow the results obtained!

Figure 1 has been changed to describe the strengths of the relationships as: weak, medium, and strong.

Also, a description has been added to the text.

Altered text:

The legends, thickness of the arrows represents the strength of the relationship as weak connections is mentioned by two to four participants, medium connections are mentioned by four to six participants and strong connections is mentioned by more than six participants, are explained in Figure 1 to support Figure 2 to 5.

L327, L334-L339, L346

…when quoting the answers of the respondents, in addition to italic, it would be good to put quotation marks!

Citation marks has been added to the quotes.

L555-560:

the text in the paragraph in question corresponds more to the discussion chapter, and in the same chapter other limitations within the subject research should also be mentioned!

The paragraph has been moved to discussion chapter. Other paragraphs discussing the study limitations has also been added. Added text:

“The use of different channels for sampling was done with the aim to find participants with different motives to enroll in forest certification. As it turned out the majority of participants were members of forest owners’ associations and had thereby often been encouraged to become certified through their membership. However, the difference in sampling procedure when contacting forest owners directly from a contact list and advertising in forest owners’ networks were the forest owners themselves took initiative for the interview provided the study with participants from groups with different interest in and willingness to talk about forest certification. Also contributing to the aim of finding participants with different perspectives.

The conclusions are written very generally. I would like to see more precise conclusions, evidently matching your purpose (a) clearly related to the overall results of the whole sample and comparation to similar studies, (b) clearly related to gender and (c) clearly related to the occupation and income.

We have added some, more precise, conclusions from our study:

Being a certified forest owner is a formal acknowledgment of sustainable development and demonstration of motives of being a responsible forest owner. Key contributions from the empirical findings in this study relate to further understandings of motives for certification:

·     Taking pride of being a forest owner is important to forest owners and this study shows that forest certification can be a part of that. Being proud of how the forest is managed means different things to different forest owners. For the interviewed women the motives were associate with an internal understanding of environmental do good. Interviewed men, on the other hand were motivated by external confirmation of being professional in environmental management. As forest owner group characteristics shift towards more heterogeneity it raises needs to understand different kinds of needs and support measures for taking pride in forest management. 

·     Different groups of forest owners have different motives and experience of forest certification. If forest certification is regarded as a service offering to forest owners there might be need to differentiate that offering and the type of service that need to be included. For interviewed forest owners that have the forest as a primary income, the notion of a certification can be more of an infringement on their management choices. Forest owners that are less dependent on the forest for their livelihood, certification rules may serve as sustainable forestry management guidance.

·     Independent of motives for forest certification price premium is today, in many cases, an expected benefit of becoming certified. This price premium is also an acknowledgement and recognition for ‘doing the right thing’.

Yes

Can be improved

Must be improved

Not applicable

Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references?

(x)

( )

( )

( )

Are all the cited references relevant to the research?

(x)

( )

( )

( )

Is the research design appropriate?

(x)

( )

( )

( )

Are the methods adequately described?

( )

(x)

( )

( )

Are the results clearly presented?

(x)

( )

( )

( )

Are the conclusions supported by the results?

(x)

( )

( )

( )

Line no.

Comment

Our reply

Overall, the research is well done. The introduction, methods and results are clearly presented to the readers. There are some remarks that need to be answered in order for the study to be better explained:

The description of the methods should make it clearer how exactly these selected men and women were included in the statistical sample, and how their answers are valid for Swedish forestry. If other men and women from different parts of the country are involved, will the same results be obtained?

The sampling process has been further described in the method chapter. Also, a paragraph about the limitations of the sampling process has been added to the discussion chapter.

…The sampling was based on a procedure to find variation among participants in relation to factors like property size, gender, and whether the owners are living on the estate and has forestry as main income. This can also be described as a sampling for maximum variation that aims at finding participants that reflects different perspectives based on the investigated criteria [51]…

In the results section could be valuable to be included some descriptive statistics of the surveyed sample.

A table comparing the participants in this study with statistic for Swedish forest owners in general is included in the results chapter (Table 3)

The period of interviews is very short. It can be said, the period is like a moment picture of the sample. Are all these values and understandings about consequences stable? If any crises appear, are they remain the same?  It would be interesting to be mentioned something about the motives in crises like COVID 19, war threats or macroeconomic negative fluctuations.

Thank you for this comment! Further remarks regarding changes in forest owner demographics has been added to the conclusion chapter (see below). We have an understanding of changes in institutional conditions, understandings of sustainable development and political situations as factors that slowly influence the forestry owners motives for certification schemes. 

Added text:

“The motives for forest certification as well as objectives with forest ownership depends on factor related to the forest owner such as gender and occupation. Forest owners as a group are becoming more heterogenic and will have varied ideas about their forest owner identity [59]. The new types of forest owners might not value forest certification for its contribution to forestry income. Rather the role of forest certification will depend on how it is viewed in relation to sustainable development.”