Digital nudges to increase climate-friendly forestry

Target group of this intervention are those forest owners who are the sole owners of their forest estate (no shared ownership) and who have in their forest potential related either to ash fertillization or tending of seedlings/young stands. The intervention itself consists of a set of digital elements that i) attrach forest owners' attention to the potential she/he has in the forest, ii) guide forest owners to examine this potential on a map, where further information on the potential is available, and iii) provide easy access to a contact form, through which the forest owner can seek for advice or assistance related to the activity in question. During the treatment, these elements are visible to forest owners in the treatment groups but not to forest owners in the control group.

The pre-treatment period lasted from 1st March to 10th of June. During this period the digital elements were not visible to anyone. The treatment period lasts from 11 June to 1st October. The post-treatment period lasts from 2nd October to 31st of December. During this period the digital elements are visible to all forest owners, who have been identified to have either potential in their forests.

Target group of this intervention are those forest owners who are the sole owners of their forest estate (no shared ownership) and who have in their forest potential related either to ash fertillization or tending of seedlings/young stands. The intervention itself consists of a set of digital elements that i) attrach forest owners' attention to the potential she/he has in the forest, ii) guide forest owners to examine this potential on a map, where further information on the potential is available, and iii) provide easy access to a contact form, through which the forest owner can seek for advice or assistance related to the activity in question. During the treatment, these elements are visible to forest owners in the treatment groups but not to forest owners in the control group.

The pre-treatment period lasted from 1st March to 10th of June. During this period the digital elements were not visible to anyone. The treatment period lasts from 11 June to 1st October. The post-treatment period lasts from 2nd October to 31st of December. During this period the digital elements are visible to all forest owners, who have been identified to have either potential in their forests.

2024-06-11

2024-12-31

Individual level measures: i) number of contact requests (forms) made by the forest owner concerning two selected forestry activities, and ii) number of subsidy applications from forest estates owned by the forest owners, concerning two selected forestry activities, as well as hectares covered by applications. Forestry practices under examination: tending of seedlings and young stands; ash fertilization.

Individual level measures: i) number of contact requests (forms) made by the forest owner concerning two selected forestry activities, and ii) number of subsidy applications from forest estates owned by the forest owners, concerning two selected forestry activities, as well as hectares covered by applications. Forestry practices under examination: tending of seedlings and young stands; ash fertilization.

The target group of this experiment consists of Finnish forest owners who are the sole owner of their forest estate (i.e. no shared ownership). They were selected from the national forest owner registry maintained by the Forest Center, the government official also managing the Metsään.fi portal. These forest owners were divided into two groups based on the characteristics of their forest estate: the first group consists of forest owners who have ash fertilization potential in their forests. The second group consists of forest owners who, in their forest, have potential for tending of seedlings or young stands. The potential related to these two activities is calculated by the Forest Center, based on the national forest resource data. The forest owners in these two groups were then randomly divided into two subgroups: treatment group and control group. To summarize, this experiment had four groups of forest owners: ash fertilization treatment, ash fertilization control, seedlings treatment and seedlings control.

Randomization done in office by a computer

Randomization at individual forest owner level

No

No clusters.

Number of forest owners, who have in their forest potential for tending seedlings/young stands, is 71,340. They were divided randomly to treatment and control groups (35,670 forest owners in both groups). Number of forest owners, who have in their forest potential for ash fertilization, is 87,637. These forest owners were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups (43,819 forest owners in both groups). However, we dont yet how many of these forest owners in both treatment and control groups are logging into the Metsaan.fi portal and therefore see the digital nudges (in the treatment group) or familiarize with other elements of the portal but not the digital nudges (in the control group). These figures are available only after the experiment is closed. We expect that approximately 4-5% of the potential forest owners log in so roughly 2,850-3,570 forest owners having tending potential and 3,500-4,380 forest owners having ash fertilization potential would log in.

Two arms: treated and untreated.

With binary outcome, desired power of 0.80, and an alpha level of 0.05, we assume that percentage "success" in control group is 6% and 9% in the treated group (conservative estimates). This gives us a total sample size requirement of 2,414 forest owners, which requires that 3-4% of the forest owners in the target group should log in to the portal, which we consider realistic.