Tiffany Fegel

Date of Graduation

2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design

Department

Forest Resource Management

Committee Chair

David McGill

Committee Co-Chair

Kathryn Gazal

Committee Member

David Smaldone

Abstract

Non-industrial private forest owners (NIPF) make up the majority of the landscape in the eastern United States. Historically NIPF owners have been treated as a homogenous group. This however does not adequately represent the diversity of this population's ownership objectives, management concerns, and land values that are important in understanding how to tailor educational outreach programs to this group. Butler (2008) called for the need to separate this large population into smaller populations that are more homogenous in order to better reach them with educational programs. To answer this call we divided NIPF owners into two distinct groups, male and female woodland owners. In this research, educational preferences and management roles of woodland owners in West Virginia were investigated for differences among these two groups of owners.;Utilizing a mail-based questionnaire, four counties in West Virginia were surveyed with the objective of gaining a better understanding of the female population of woodland owners and managers. Principal component analysis and logistic regression were used to analyze the data collected. Results show that management roles greatly differ between genders, however, educational preferences are not as clearly defined.

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