Abstract
Legacy, sometimes called intergenerational land transfer or forestland bequest, is an important subject for family forest landowners. While the literature primarily addresses legacy from an economic perspective or as a function of landowner characteristics, this research explores how past, present, and future connections to forestland shape family forest landowners’ conceptions of legacy. This research uses the Q method, a mixed qualitative/quantitative method, to explore differences between African American and White family forest landowners in Georgia, United States. It identifies four distinct typologies for landowner conceptualization of legacy: Family Forest Managers, Family Forest Investors, Family Forest Stewards, and Family Forest Skeptics. Despite historical and landowner characteristic differences, the differences between the typologies are minimal between the races. We found African American landowners are motivated by the collective struggle of African Americans to obtain and retain forestland. In contrast, White family forest landowners are motivated by personal identification with their forestland. For forest management professionals, understanding family forest landowners’ conception of legacy and motivations concerning intergenerational land transfer is valuable for planning the future of forestlands in Georgia, and by extension, across the Southern United States.
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Acknowledgements
Authors would like to express their gratitude to the 49 landowners who participated in our survey and especially to the 11 landowners who participated in the interviews and the three landowners who provided expert opinions in designing the survey. We would also like to acknowledge the members of the Greene–Morgan Forest Landowners Association and Fort Valley State University Cooperative Extension, who invited us to conduct the pile sorting exercise at the workshops.
Funding
This research is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, United States Department of Agriculture, under Award Number 2016-38640-25382 through the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program under Sub-award Number LS17-281.
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NG collected and analyzed the data and wrote the paper. PD conceptualized the idea, wrote the paper, and supervised the research.
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Goyke, N., Dwivedi, P. How Do African American and White Family Forest Landowners Conceptualize Forest Legacy in Georgia, United States?. Small-scale Forestry 20, 39–57 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-020-09455-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-020-09455-4