Longitudinal data on family forest owners: The US Forest Service’s National Woodland Owner Survey

Abstract Although a rich history of scholarship exists on the attitudes, past behaviors, and behavioral intentions of family forest owners, little is known about how these social factors change over time. Furthermore, linking behavioral intentions with actual behaviors of family forest owners will require a longitudinal design that re-measures behaviors of the same respondents over time to match with earlier surveys of intention to behavior. Previous attempts to measure behavioral and attitudinal change over time have been largely opportunistic and have not followed a true longitudinal study design. Additionally, previous attempts to measure change in family forest owner behavior have been limited in geographic scope. This research note briefly describes data management considerations for analyzing the U.S. Forest Service’s National Woodland Owner Survey (NWOS) longitudinally for the past three iterations of the survey and describes the potential changes in family forest ownership to demonstrate the approach. Forty-one percent of commonly-sampled points remained in the same ownership type between the first two survey iterations, and interesting shifts in ownership type were observed. For example, 30% of resampled locations changed ownership between the two survey iterations. As the NWOS continues to be implemented, the value of this longitudinal dataset will continue increasing, even as respondents are lost to follow-up, or as land changes hands.