Understanding Absentee Forest Landowners and their Impact on Wooded Lands
Nearly half of the wooded land in the United States is owned by individuals and families who have 10 or more acres. Half of this forested land (a total of about 123 million acres) is under the control of absentee landowners who live more than a mile away from their properties. Scientists wanted to determine how absenteeism influences landowner attitudes, behaviors, or intentions such as those related to forest management activities.
One commonly held belief is that absentee landowners may be less connected or engaged with their forested properties than landowners who live on or near their land. However, the definition of an absentee forest landowner remains inconsistent and unclear in the existing research literature. This makes it challenging to assess how absenteeism influences landowner attitudes, behaviors, or intentions.
Key Findings
- The distance the landowner resides from their wooded land affects whether differences between resident and absentee landowners are statistically significant.
- For some land stewardship behaviors, how close family forest owners live to their land does matter, while it has less impact on others.
- Family forest landowners' personal engagement with their forests tends to decline as the distance from their wooded land increases.
- Landowners living on or near their wooded land are more likely to cut wood for personal use, harvest non-timber forest products, and feel well-acquainted with their land.
- Resident landowners are less likely to build roads or lease their land to others than absentee owners.
Figure 1. Distribution of the distance between family forest landowners and their forest land in the United States. N=7886. Mean=103.6 miles; median=5.6 miles)
Approach
Using data from the USDA Forest Service's National Woodland Owner Survey (NWOS), scientists explored differences between resident and absentee family forest landowners across multiple measures of absenteeism, primarily based on how far they lived from their forest land. Study goals included being able to define absentee owners more clearly in future research, gaining insights into differences between absentee and resident landowners, and informing targeted outreach, programs, or incentives to assist absentee owners in engaging with their forested properties.
The study found that resident landowners were more likely to cut wood for personal use and harvest non-timber forest products than were absentee owners. At the same time, leasing land or constructing roads was more likely among absentee landowners. For other stewardship activities, differences between resident and absentee landowners changed depending on distance of absentee owners from their forest land.
Outcomes
Valuable insights into differences between resident and absentee landowners will be gained by using a continuous, rather than binary, distance measure for absenteeism.
Increased participation in forest health activities, such as invasive species management, may result from greater engagement of absentee landowners with their land.
Better understanding of absentee landowners will help extension foresters and others design more effective education programs and outreach materials to help these landowners.