DETERMINATION OF STAKEHOLDERS' PERCEPTION OF STUMPAGE SALES POLICY IN FOREST MANAGEMENT DIRECTORATE: A CASE STUDY FROM WESTERN BLACK SEA REGION OF TURKEY

This paper is aimed to determine the stakeholders' perception against a new forest management policy for stumpage sales in the Western Black Sea Region of Turkey. Ownership of country's forests (99.9%) belongs to the government and timber production and sales have been managed by The General Directorate of Forest (GDF) in Turkey. In the last decade, GDF applied the new stumpage policy to increase efficiency and decrease costs of management procedures because of the last policy's deficiency. In the case of stumpage policy, it is also important to consider benefits of this policy change to stakeholders. There are four main stakeholders in stumpage policy: forest management (GDF's technical personal, forest engineers), forest villagers (FV), forest cooperatives (FC), forest industry and logging contractors (FI). To analyze and evaluate these factors, this paper examines the perception and point of views of the stakeholders, using a large number of survey data. The structural equation modeling results show that the stumpage policy needs to be revised by the forest management due to stakeholders' negative perception related to technical, social and managerial aspects of the stumpage policy. This policy should be reconsidered to decrease the negative perception of the stakeholders and improved by the participatory approach by decision makers in Turkish forestry.