Narratives of ‘home landscapes’ guide stewardship practices among Swedish forest owners

Production forests play an important role in addressing many of our current sustainability challenges. Therefore, how these forests are managed and what motivates the people who are managing them are important for sustainability. 47 per cent of forests in Europe are privately owned. Private landowners are known to be motivated by diverse values and interests. The Swedish notion of hembygdskänsla , or sense of home landscape, is likely to play a role, but is so far poorly understood in relation to the stewardship practices of this actor group. This study uses a virtual photo elicitation exercise to explore how hembygdskänsla motivates private, non‐industrial forest owners to engage in stewardship practices in the Helgeå catchment, southern Sweden. We developed a conceptual model of stewardship practice and used it to construct narratives based in the places where our participants feel hembygdskänsla . Our findings describe multiple co‐occurring pathways to forest stewardship, guided by recurring narratives that are rooted in diverse and relational values. These narratives capture how private forest owners' motivations range from sustaining their own livelihoods, responsibilities to maintain and care for historic landscapes, to striving for long‐term resilience in the forest ecosystem. Policy implications : Policies for promoting sustainability must acknowledge diverse values and motivations. Flexible policy instruments that target multiple values and foster relationships, while still allowing for autonomy, would encourage private landowners to practice stewardship and support personal motivations to care for their land. Additionally, leveraging hembygdskänsla and other related culture‐specific terms to describe human‐nature relationships would support stewardship and biocultural diversity. Such terms could be used for cross‐site learning for sustainability transformations. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.