Economic issues of incentive contracts for free access and recreation of public in private forests: the case of risk management | Analyse économique des contrats pour les activités récréatives en forêts privées : le cas de la gestion des risques

The aim of this paper is to analyse the economic issues of the incentive contracts conclude between public authorities and landowners permitting free access and recreation of public in private forests. The majority of foresters are non-industrial private forest owners (NIPF), so they are confronted with problems of the joint production timber and amenities. Their forest management is getting complicated with the access of public in their forest that can have consequences for their income, for their utility and for an increase of fire risk probability. In order to answer to recreational demand, the French forest law of 2001 requires private forest owners to provide recreational activities and it encourages the implementation of financial incentive schemes to integrate better the supply of recreation services with the other functions of forest and woodlands, as productive as non-productive ones. We first analyse an example of conventions that tend to resolve the problem of the increasing fire risk generated by the public by proposing a free insurance. This convention has been implemented in the Landes department of France, which is a high fire risk area. The proposition of the public authorities meets refusals, so we develop a model of insurance in order to know if the refusal can be explained by a too low indemnity for risk covering or by a too much strict coverage. We conclude that these contracts are largely generous and they can go beyond risk management. That is the reason why we present, in a second part, different facilities that can be used to propose a recreation supply. These facilities imply constraints and costs for the landowners. Finally, in a third part, we value the landowner's willingness to accept for each constraint and cost knowing that increasing fire risk can modify their willingness to accept. The analysis lean on data stemming from a contingent valuation design led in 2006 in the department of Landes. We conclude that the perception of increasing fire risk is fundamental because there is an ambiguity on the probability and the degree of ambiguity influences the choice to contract or not.