An assessment of nonindustrial private forest landowner willingness to harvest woody biomass in support of bioenergy production in Mississippi: A contingent rating approach

The economic feasibility of utilizing woody biomass to produce biofuel lies in the willingness to harvest by non-industrial private forest (NIPF) landowners, who control 71% of forestland in the southern United States. A mail survey was distributed to NIPF landowners throughout Mississippi to elicit their preferences concerning the utilization of logging residues from harvesting operations to produce bioenergy. When presented with hypothetical situations that compared the bioenergy utilization harvesting attributes along with those of standard clearcutting in pine plantations, more landowners preferred those associated with the bioenergy utilization scenarios, even when more money was offered for the standard clearcutting option. Older landowners with larger landholdings were less likely to prefer the bioenergy scenarios. Landowners with more formal education who were financially motivated, considered habitat management an important goal, and thought global climate change was an important issue, were more likely to prefer the bioenergy utilization scenario over the standard clearcut. This indicates that a market for logging residues, in the form of wood-based bioenergy, could increase NIPF landowner harvest rates based solely on the different harvesting attributes, and that most woody biomass feedstocks from pine plantations would be available for the production of bioenergy in Mississippi.