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Broad Changes in Environmental Attitudes and Values

A review of the literature revealed a strong and fundamental shift in public valuation of forests over the past two decades (e.g., see Bengston 1994, Bengston and Fan 1999, Cramer and others 1993, Manning and others 1999, Rolston and Coufal 1991, Steel and Lovrich 1997, Steel and others 1994, Tarrant and Cordell 1997, Xu and Bengston 1997). Support has shifted away from a commodity-oriented, anthropocentric approach to forest management and toward a more inclusive and diverse (commodity and noncommodity) biocentric approach. For the past 100 years, forest management has endorsed a resource conservation philosophy that emphasizes wise human use and development of resources, dominance of economic over noneconomic values, and human control over nature (Bengston 1994, Steel and others 1994). The change to a biocentric philosophy of forest management recognizes multiple values (which include traditional uses as well as nonuses) of forests, the production of human and nonhuman benefits, and the importance of public involvement in management decisions. Steel and Lovrich (1997) argued that the movement toward a biocentric approach to forests and forest management in North America reflects a postindustrial society in which higher order needs for self-development and self-actualization have supplanted subsistence needs that are satisfied through material acquisition. Factors that have contributed to this change include a shift in population from rural to urban areas, an increase in economic growth, and technological innovations.

Overall, research findings support (1) a relative decline in utilitarian forest values, (2) a concomitant increase in valuing life-support aspects of forests in the past decade, and (3) more favorable attitudes toward noncommodity forest issues and objectives (see Bengston and Fan 1999, Cordell and others 1996, Cramer and others 1993, Manning and others 1999, Steel and others 1997, Xu and Bengston 1997). In one of the few studies that focused specifically on the South, Cordell and others (1996) showed that Southern Appalachian residents exhibited moderately stronger proenvironmental values and attitudes than the national average. For example, more Southern Appalachian respondents were against increasing timber harvesting on private land (46.5 percent) than were in favor (35.8 percent), and a large majority were against timber harvesting on public lands (72.1 percent) compared with those in favor (17.6 percent). These results are consistent with our findings that wood production was valued as least important of the four objects associated with private or public forests. Other studies also reveal a relatively high level of environmental concern among southern residents. For example, a University of North Carolina (1993) study reported that 48 percent of southern respondents (versus 43 percent of nonsoutherners) felt that the environment had become worse in the past 10 years, and 13 percent (versus 19 percent of nonsoutherners) felt that the environment had improved. In a University of South Carolina (1992) study, 81 percent of South Carolina residents indicated that it was more important to maintain an acceptable level of water quality than to increase the number of jobs in the State. In other work, Bengston and Fan (1999) found that the most strongly held attitudes about roads in national forests were that they provide recreation access and contribute to ecological damage. While commodity-related benefits such as access for timber harvesting or mining were rated less important than noncommodity values such as access for recreation, eastern (including southern) residents placed higher value on commodity benefits than did western and Intermountain residents. Nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) landowners account for about 70 percent of the forest land in the South and 58 percent in the Nation as a whole. A majority of southern NIPF landowners report that they manage their forests for economic and noneconomic nontimber attributes (Bourke and Luloff 1994, Sinclair and Knuth 2000).