Quality of web-based forest management information relevant to small private forest owners

Small private forest owners make an important contribution to sustainable, climate-resilient, and biodiversity-friendly forest management. However, they represent a heterogeneous group of owners who differ considerably in terms of the size of their forest holdings, their educational background, their degree of urbanization, and their forestry expertise. At the same time, forest owners are increasingly confronted with policy targets and societal expectations related to climate adaptation and ecosystem service provision. These expectations imply that non-professional small private forest owners without a background in forestry are particularly capable of independently accessing forestry-related knowledge and applying it to specific forest management decisions. In this context, digital information sources are increasingly serving as easily accessible resources that complement professional advisory services and facilitate initial contact with professional foresters. Against this backdrop, this study aims to assess the availability and scope of digital information on forest management by analyzing the information quality in web-based texts. The results show that the current digital information landscape only meets the expectations of autonomous, understandable, and action-oriented use by non-professional, small private forest owners to a limited extent. Access to relevant, user-friendly information on forest management is limited by factors such as limited thematic availability, high linguistic complexity, and differences in the quality and institutional origin of information sources. Consequently, the use of digital information texts currently appears to offer only limited support to small private forest owners in achieving the politically desired forest management goals.