Are the Social Layers of Ecosystem Services Understandable Through Service Dominant Logic: The Business Potential of Forest as an Experience

Abstract: In the state-of-the-art Service Dominant Logic debate (e.g. Vargo & Lusch 2004, 2008, 2011), the user, customer or utilizer defines the value of an offering. This paper reports the preliminary results of an inquiry into the ecosystem services and the value they deliver for forest owners (e.g. Millenium ecosystem assessment. 2005). We used Finnish non-industrial forest owners as a proxy for a high-involvement group of ecosystem service utilizers. Within this group we tried to identify new spearhead groups in order to try to understand the future of forest resource utilization. This paper reports survey findings of 302 personal (phone) interviews with Finnish forest owners. An 18-point scale was adopted in measuring respondents’ personal views on forests they own, in particular, seeking to find out what forests mean for them. These questions were contrasted with questions measuring forest owners’ multi-use views of our natural surroundings. We found a clear five dimensional valuation structure in a principal axis factoring analysis and we were able to identify a group of highly multi-use orientated forest owners from the sample. The factor structure explained almost 60% of the variance existing. The multi-use owners had differed views in all five dimensions of forest meaning (economic income from the forest, hedonistic value of forest, self-efficacy related to forests, perceived health effects of natural forests and nature protection locally & globally. Thus, the results portray new types of nature based and nature originating value creation, and thus, highlight the business potential of new types of services catering this group.

Keywords: Ecosystem Services, Service Dominant Logic, Finnish forest owners

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe100302

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