An integrated analysis of the effectiveness of Tennessee’s Forest Greenbelt Program (original) (raw)
Related papers
Politics and Policy, 2003
This study of Tennessee k tax incentive program for nonindustrial forest preservation on private lands provides perhaps the most thorough empirical analysis available of this type of public program. First, the program k equily consequences are analyzed by examining both the concentration of land ownership and of subsidy benefits among program participants. Second, its effectiveness is evaluated by estimating the impact of the program under diflering sets of assumptions about preferred selling prices and through a survey and comparison of a matched set ofprogram participants and nonparticipants concerning their land use practices and attitudes. The study concludes with recommendations for tax policy reforms to create a better balance between public and private benefits, especially the expansion of program objectives to include biological diversity conservation and other non-commodity-based values.
Land Use Policy, 2014
Forest property taxes have been identified as one of the major driving forces behind forest loss and parcelization. Among various policy alternatives for reducing the burden of forest property taxes on landowners, preferential property tax programs have been widely used across states. Existing research has mostly focused on individual property tax programs, particularly those based on current use valuation, while little has been done to document, analyze and compare programs across states. By examining survey data from state preferential property tax program administrators across the United States, this paper describes the commonalities and differences among states regarding their preferential property tax programs, provides a preliminary understanding of the relationship between state preferential property tax policy and trends in private forest conditions, and identifies issues related to the effectiveness of state preferential property tax programs and private forest land management and conservation. Our analysis revealed three fundamental disconnects: (1) Program attributes that were previously considered to be important for preferential property tax programs to be effective in retaining forest land and fostering management did not consistently correlate with program effectiveness as viewed by the administrators of these programs; (2) These program attributes did not consistently correlate with actual program effectiveness as measured at the state level by forest trend indicators used in this study (i.e., change in private forest land cover, change in average size of private forest holdings, extent to which private forest land is being actively managed); and (3) The self-assessed program effectiveness did not consistently correlate with actual program effectiveness, either. The various ways in which the effectiveness of preferential property tax programs is defined and measured contribute to explaining these disconnects. It is particularly important for researchers and policy makers to be explicit about how they define and measure effectiveness and the scale on which they conduct their analysis before assessing and comparing programs or suggesting improvement strategies.
Land Use Policy, 2012
One-third of the forestland in the U.S. is owned by 10.4 million family forest owners. Their collective decisions have a great impact on the sustainability of forest landscape across the country. Public policies and programs for encouraging landowners to properly manage their land include cost-share, forest certification, and conservation easements. However, to date, less than 6% of the family forest owners have participated in a cost-share program, less than 1% have certified their land, and less than 2% have an easement. By analyzing data from USDA Forest Service's National Woodland Owner Survey, we examined the characteristics of family forest owners who had participated in these programs and identified strategies to capitalize on these landowner characteristics to improve current programs and attract a wider range of participants. We found that family forest owners with larger land holdings were more likely to participate in all three types of programs. Obtaining forest management information or advice was important for program participation; however, the effects differed depending on the types of programs and the sources of information. Income was not significant in predicting participation in cost-share programs, implying family forest owners from lower-income strata were not more likely to use cost-share program. The results also suggest the importance of targeting the right audience when promoting forest certification programs, namely those who are participants of cost-share programs, own forestland for reasons other than farming or ranching, and plan to harvest sawlogs or pulpwood in the future. Age was not significant in any of the empirical models. This result is particularly intriguing in the context of conservation easement, considering recent discussions about the high cost of dying unprepared and the potential for promoting conservation easement as part of estate planning among older family forest owners. Finally, few variables were significant in the model predicting landowner decision about donating or selling an easement, suggesting the easement decision is very different from cost-share and forest certification decisions and further efforts are needed to understand the dynamics of this increasingly popular conservation policy tool. In summary, this study provides a better understanding of the relationship between program participation and the demographics, attitudes and behaviors of family forest owners. This understanding contributes to the development of outreach strategies for improving landowner interest in forest conservation programs.
2002
This study investigates the costs of subsidies for land retention and conversion, in addition to a policy that combines these incentives. A Markov model of forest and agricultural land use is estimated for the U.S. South Central region and used to simulate retention and conversion policies. Results suggest a conversion policy is less costly for increasing forest area, and a retention policy is less costly for increasing agricultural land area. The costs of separate subsidies can be up to 300% higher than the costs of combined incentives. However, when administrative costs are taken into account, conversion policies are likely to be less costly.
An Empirical Evaluation of Private Landowner Participation in Voluntary Forest Conservation Programs
Environmental management, 2009
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.
Journal of Forestry, 2018
Landowners and foresters often complain about the impact of taxes on the profitability of growing trees. This study examines the effect on forest profitability of the multiple taxes levied on non-industrial private forestland in the Southeastern United States. We look at the percent reduction in land expectation value as property, severance, state and federal income taxes are levied on a representative acre of forestland. Results for the 10 Southeastern states included in the study reveal reductions in land expectation value ranging from 32% to 63% once the various taxes are levied on a site index 70 site. This demonstrates that the effect of taxes does vary widely within the states, evaluated both when individual and combined taxes are considered.
Decisions nonindustrial forest landowners make: an empirical examination
Journal of Forest Economics, 2003
Our purpose is to estimate a model of non-industrial forest landowner behavior that considers certain types of behavior that have escaped discussion and rigorous investigation in the literature, yet which are critical to future policy making. Our focus on the many different but related decisions landowners make broadens the typical understanding of landowner behavior to show how bequest motives, debt and participation in non-timber activities, and harvesting decisions are interrelated and dependent on landowner preferences, market, and land characteristics.
15 Incentives affecting land use decisions of nonindustrial private forest landowners
Handbook of global …, 2006
In recent years the concern over the rapid degradation of forests, wetlands and other natural resources in the world has grown exponentially. Responding policies range from top down regulatory approaches to more cooperate, incentive based solutions. We address how particular types of incentives provided by governments and NGOs affect the activities of individual resource users through a focus on the management of private forests in the United States. In the USA Nonindustrial Private Forest (NIPF) landowners own 474 million acres of the forests, which provide wildlife habitat, protect watersheds, offer scenic beauty and supply 49% of the timber harvested in the United States. In this chapter we review the empirical research on forest program incentives effect on the decisions of NIPF landowners. We develop an initial theoretical framework to explain the biophysical, economic and social characteristics of the action situation that make incentives affect decision making of NIPF landowners.
An Evaluation of Working Land and Open Space Preservation Programs in Maryland
Farmland preservation programs compensate landowners who enroll for the value lost due to the the restrictions on development applied to their land. These restrictions in principle decrease the value of the land. Yet few studies have found strong statistical evidence that preserved parcels sell for lower prices than unpreserved parcels. We use both a hedonic and a propensity score method to find that preserved parcels sell for 11.4 to 19.8% less than identical unpreserved parcels in Maryland. While significant, a decrease of less than 20% in land value is surprisingly small. If impacts to land value are small, could programs pay landowners less to enroll and thus enroll more land?