Explaining forest value perceptions across Europe: A multilevel analysis of individual and geographic variation

Understanding how forest values vary across individuals and geographic contexts is important for comparative forest research and governance. We examined socio-cultural, provisioning, and regulating/supporting forest values among 12,460 adults in 12 European countries and five macro-regions. Weighted linear mixed-effects models estimated associations with socio-demographic characteristics, forest ownership, and social proximity to forest owners, while three-level models partitioned residual variation across macro-regions, countries, and respondents. Most residual variation occurred at the respondent level, but geographic clustering differed across value domains. Country and macro-region jointly accounted for 21.22% (95% CI [8.08, 37.90]) of residual variation in provisioning values, compared with 2.19% [0.65, 4.58] for socio-cultural and 2.60% [0.87, 5.38] for regulating/supporting values. Despite descriptive geographic differences, no adjusted macro-regional contrast had a 95% confidence interval excluding zero. In the primary models, older age groups had higher values across all domains, although provisioning-age associations weakened in the restricted-sample analysis. Gender and education associations varied by domain. Forest owners reported higher provisioning but lower socio-cultural and regulating/supporting values; the socio-cultural ownership association also weakened after sample restriction. Social proximity to forest owners was positively associated with all three domains. These findings highlight domain-specific geographic and social structuring of forest values, supporting approaches that distinguish forest-value domains while accounting for national context and within-country heterogeneity.