Postdoc: Pro-environmental behaviours and attitudes towards forest ecosystem services provision and payments for environmental services

Context and general objectives
Forests cover 30% of the territory of the Grand-East Region and allow the existence of a local wood industry that generates income and employment. In addition to the wood supply, they host an important biodiversity and provide multiple forest ecosystem services (FES) such as water quality regulation services, cultural and recreational services that benefit the local population, or climate regulation services that have a positive global effect on the whole society. However, these FES and biodiversity are not always taken into account in forest management, mainly due to a lack of economic valuation. We also lack information on how different forest management practices and associated EFS are perceived by forest users.

The post-doctoral work is part of the PERCEVAL project led by the UMR BETA, whose general objective is to assess the potential for developing a platform for marketing FES in the Grand Est region and to co-construct and implement a digital platform for the exchange of FES with economic partners and civil society actors. The work will be conducted within the Research Component 1 (RC1) “Attitudes and preferences of stakeholders”, whose objective is to explore and assess the attitudes and preferences of the population towards the provision of FES, forest management and forest policy objectives, in a context of climate uncertainty. In doing so, the person recruited will contribute to a better consideration of societal expectations in the development and implementation of forest and territorial policies aimed at the emergence of the bioeconomy. This work is also part of action 1.1 “Services rendered by trees” of the Innovation Territory project “Des Hommes et Des Arbres” (DHDA) and in particular operation 1.1.4. carried out by the UMR BETA.


Research project
The objective of the work will be to develop theoretical and empirical knowledge on how the general population and forest owners perceive FES and their potential marketability via a trading platform, as well as to identify the socio-economic, cognitive and psychological determinants of individuals’ expectations of how forests are and should be managed for the provision of FES. To this end, a hierarchical cognitive model of attitudes and behaviors towards the management of forests for the provision of FES will be constructed and tested. In addition, owners’ preferences for markets for FES will be assessed. Empirical applications will be made on the basis of survey data and choice experiment (CE).

The main objective of the work will be to answer the following questions: How are environmental attitudes specific to the provision of ES structured, and what roles do they play in determining behavioral intentions towards the establishment of markets for them?
This question is divided into several sub-questions:
– How are forest-specific environmental attitudes structured in the general population and among forest owners?
– To what extent do individuals’ general and forest-specific environmental attitudes influence their preferences for the establishment of market mechanisms for FES?
– To what extent do these cognitions and their structuration differ according to the type of actor considered?

The working hypotheses are as follows:
– Attitudes specific to the provision of FES through forest management mediate between deep (values, general attitudes) and surface (PES preferences) cognitions;
– Peripheral factors, including degree of attachment to the land, personal connection to the forestry sector and level of forestry knowledge, influence attitudes;
– It is possible to identify several groups (archetypes) of forest users and forest owners according to their attitudinal profiles and preferences;
– Among forest owners, there may be a difference between attitudes towards the provision of FES in general and attitudes towards the provision of FES on their own forest.


Research unit and management

The Bureau d’Economie Théorique et Appliquée (BETA) is the main laboratory in Economics and Management in the Grand-Est region. The person recruited will be hosted by the BETA on its AgroParisTech campus in Nancy. It is the reference research unit in France on economic issues related to forestry. It conducts high-level research on the evaluation of ecosystem services, forest management, and bioeconomic forecasting for the forestry and wood industry. This research is often carried out in an interdisciplinary perspective, in strong synergy with disciplines from the environmental sciences.

The young researcher will be part of a team of about 30 people, which will encourage exchanges. He or she will be able to work closely not only with the project leaders, but also with other researchers specializing in ecosystem services and the survey methods used in the project. The geographical and institutional proximity with other laboratories of AgroParisTech and INRAE will also allow the researcher to assimilate the forestry context. Finally, he or she will be integrated into the community of the Territoires d’Innovation program “Des Hommes et Des Arbres”, led by the Metropole du Grand Nancy, which is co-financing this project.

The person recruited will be supervised by several researchers associated with the above-mentioned projects:
– Miguel Rivière (AgroParisTech, UMR CIRED and BETA) and Ankinée Kirakozian (University of Lorraine, UMR BETA), in charge of the RC1 of the PERCEVAL project and of the operation 1.1.4. of the DHDA project.
– Serge Garcia (INRAE, UMR BETA), coordinator of the PERCEVAL project.
– Jens Abildtrup (INRAE, UMR BETA), in charge of the RC2 of the PERCEVAL project and of the operation 1.1.5 “Ecosystem Services Exchange” of the DHDA project.

For further information, please see the attached document.

Job location : Nancy UMR BETA
Nature of the job : Post-doc
Contact person : Miguel Rivière,
Application deadline : 31/12/2022
Attached file : pro-environmental-behaviours-and-attitudes-towards-forest-ecosystem-services-provision-and-payments-for-environmental-services-_-inrae-jobs.pdf