Towards a comprehensive social and natural scientific forest-recreation monitoring instrument—A prototypical approach

Abstract Forest policy planning and broad-scale management is often based on forest inventory data in many countries. However, the importance of social aspects such as aesthetic and recreational values is increasing, especially in urban areas, and need to be considered in forestry practice. We conducted a forest visitor survey at selected National Forest Inventory (NFI) sample plots in order to test whether this would be a way of integrating the social dimension of forest with national forest inventories toward a more comprehensive forest monitoring instrument, focusing on forest recreation and aesthetics. Visitors were asked to rate the visual attractiveness of the NFI plot and the surrounding forest. Multi-level modeling combining both plot-related inventory data and visitor-related questionnaire data showed that perceived forest attractiveness is determined by both social and physical factors. We conclude that it is worth further developing this method with the aim of implementing forest visitor surveys at a subset of NFI plots during routine field assessments, and, thus, significantly improving monitoring of forest recreation.