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People have different beliefs about the environmental impact of forest products. This quantitative web-survey study investigated public beliefs in Finland and Sweden about the environmental and climate impacts of using wood as a construction material for multi-story buildings. It was conducted with consumer panels reflecting the average populations of the two countries. The study analyzed factors affecting beliefs that multi-story Wood Buildings: (1) contribute to mitigating global warming, and (2) adversely impact biodiversity and the climate. It used consumer panel and multivariate statistics. Favorable climate-related beliefs were associated with Finnish nationality, male gender, age, children in household, university degree, and beliefs that climate change is induced by humans and causes weather disasters. Beliefs that wood buildings drive global warming and harm biodiversity were associated with non-rural residence, female gender, young age, children in household, low income, and beliefs that climate change causes weather disasters. No associations were recorded for current residence types. These findings highlight the importance of the wood construction industry to improve, document, and communicate to the public its impact on climate and biodiversity. They also indicate how market information can be formulated and targeted to communicate an accurate environmental image of wood construction.

This study investigated peoples requirements for multi-story housing attributes and preferences for apartments in wooden-structure versus steel/concrete-structure multi-story buildings. Data came from an online survey conducted in Finland and Sweden that screened for respondents who expressed a preference for living in an apartment, as compared with a low-rise dwelling. Responses were analyzed using exploratory factor and regression analyses. Swedish respondents assigned significantly higher requirements to factors related to environmental and social sustainability performance than Finnish respondents. Requirements in both countries were described across three factors: environmental and social sustainability, quality, and design. Factor scores differed between socioeconomic sub-groups, particularly regarding quality, between urban and non-urban respondents. Preferences to live in an apartment in a wooden building were positively associated with respondents requirements for environmental and social sustainability, and negatively with requirements for quality-related attributes. Opposite relationships were found in the Swedish sample for apartments in non-wooden structure houses. Design requirements had no significant association with preferences for a specific material in load-bearing structures for multi-story buildings, in either country. The findings can contribute toward enhanced marketing efforts and customized value propositions to increase the social acceptability of multi-story wooden buildings and advance climate-related goals within the housing sector. Funding Agencies|Swedish government research council for sustainable development (FORMAS) [Brg1928]; Nordic Forest Research

This study aimed to investigate Finnish primary school teachers’ experiences of the three-tiered support system, which was launched in 2010–2011 with the goal of promoting the inclusive approach in Finnish compulsory school. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with eight teachers in Finland, and the analysis was based on a thematic analytical approach. Results show that the teachers experienced having a central role in providing continuous support to pupils with different learning disabilities within the support system. Generally, they had a positive assessment of the system, which they saw as a natural part of their regular job. Nevertheless, they expressed facing challenges, such as the extended documentation and too little time for supporting all pupils in the class. The support from colleagues (i.e. special education teachers) was seen as very important, although their experience of consultation time was limited. Regarding the teachers’ competences in handling the system, it was evident they had developed relevant skills by collaborating with the special education teacher and by being active themselves. Despite the challenges, the results show that Finnish primary teachers experienced the support system as a possible and practicable way of supporting pupils with learning disabilities. Paid Open Access

Multi-storey wood building (MSWB) provides options to enhance sustainable development. Despite this, no comprehension exists on how consumer perceptions differ regarding (1) willingness to live in ...

Women working in the Nordic forest sector are underrepresented in top leadership positions, despite the female share increasing in higher education programs. Little research exists on this ...

This paper provides an analysis on the integration of prices for imported coniferous pulpwood and sawlogs, and respective domestic stumpage prices in the Finnish wood market. Eight real price series were investigated during 2002–2014 using monthly observations. The bounds testing approach by Pesaran et al. [(2001) Bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships. J Appl Econom. 16: 289–326. doi:10.1002/jae.616], indicates there are long-run relationships between prices of domestic and imported wood. For more detailed information, the vector error correction model (VECM) approach was used. Estimation of a system with all eight prices with interpretable results did not succeed; therefore, we estimated models for prices of sawlogs and for pulpwood separately. For sawlogs, two co-integrating vectors, one for pine and one for spruce, were found. For pulpwood prices, one co-integrating vector was identified. The estimated VECMs confirm the results of bounds testing approach, suggesting t...

The transformation of the forest sector toward a bioeconomy calls for finding new sources of competitive advantage for the whole sector to retain its future viability. Non-industrial private forest owners are an important group of actors in the Finnish forest-based sector, as they supply 80% of industrial roundwood and control numerous other tangible and intangible forest-based ecosystem services. Our study analyzes forest owner views on the future use of forests in Finland, their perceptions on the evolving sectorial interlinkages and the position of the forest sector now and in the future bioeconomy. The data were collected in two phases: through telephone interviews of forest owners (n=278) and four focus group (FG) discussions (n=17), and were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The interviews showed that forest owners consider the highest potential for strengthening the sector toward bioeconomy to come from collaboration with energy and construction businesses. During the FG phase, we identified new possibilities founded on forest-based recreational services, cooperation with nature-based tourism and in increasing value-added wood products. In total, forest owners as a high-involvement group emphasized future value creation to be based upon forest ecosystem services and in diversifying the utilization of forests beyond the dominant raw material-driven mindset.

Belief normativism is roughly the view that judgments about beliefs are normative judgments. Kathrin Gluer and Asa Wikforss (G&W) suggest that there are two ways one could defend this view: by appeal to what might be called ‘truth-norms’, or by appeal to what might be called ‘norms of rationality’ or ‘epistemic norms’. According to G&W, whichever way the normativist takes, she ends up being unable to account for the idea that the norms in question would guide belief formation. Plausibly, if belief normativism were true, the relevant norms would have to offer such guidance. I argue that G&W’s case against belief normativism is not successful. In section 1, I defend the idea that truth-norms can guide belief formation indirectly via epistemic norms. In section 2, I outline an account of how the epistemic norms might guide belief. Interestingly, this account may involve a commitment to a certain kind of expressivist view concerning judgments about epistemic norms.

Understanding the state of market for modified wood as well as the forces that affect its future development will be essential for those seeking to enter the Russian market. Information on modified wood from websites of companies, research and development organisations, woodworking-oriented magazines and forums, and official Russian statistics were explored, and finally verified by personal contacts with experts. A number of modification methods have been either researched, developed or pre-commercialised during the past 15 years, but only few of them have been adopted by users. Mostly, the modification methods have been copied, further developed and commercialised from variations of thermal modification originally introduced in Western Europe. Modified wood products are still considered premium goods among Russian consumers. Political initiatives aim at increasing the share of wood in construction and renovation but also at import minimisation, which reduces the penetration of foreign producers i...

The focus of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the global forest sector has shifted from developed to developing economies (currently accounting 73% of total) during the past two decades. China has been the main global driver with its annual FDI soaring from USD 130 million in 2002 to USD 550 million in 2010. In light of international economic and business theories, choice of foreign entry mode is considered the most critical issue in corporate expansion strategy, which, however, has not been empirically studied in the forest sector. To fill this gap, our paper focuses on modeling two equity-based entry mode choices (i.e. wholly owned subsidiary or joint ventures) of foreign investment projects in China based on data from 109 activities of the Top 100 forest, paper, and packaging industry companies. By using logistic modeling, the main determinants of corporate entry mode choice are found to be cultural and geographical distance between the corporate home country and China, duration of corporate presence...

Our study focuses on exploring on the dimensionality of sustainability in perceived consumer value regarding wooden products in the Finnish context. Factors affecting consumer value on sustainability were derived from the literature on sustainable consumption and tested on a specific case of wooden terrace products through a developed survey instrument. The dimensions of sustainability-based consumer value were identified using a factor analysis on data consisting of 208 responses collected in the home and building material retail sector in May–June 2013. Four-dimensional structure for consumer value concerning sustainable and responsible wooden products is identified to consist of “Information and product origin,” “Consumer activity,” “Product image,” and “Quality.” The first two, sustainability-related factors were more strongly valued by elderly as well as by female respondents, while “Quality” and “Image” were more preferred by young and middle-aged respondent groups. As for the conclusion, our result...

Politics increasingly introduces initiatives supporting a shift toward a bioeconomy aiming at a society relying strongly on renewable biological sources while achieving economic growth efficiently and sustainably. However, the agenda of bioeconomy comprises different “shades of green,” in the sense that different actors stress different aspects of the concept, when embracing it in communication. This conceptual paper aims to present policy and socioeconomic theoretical frameworks and research areas relevant for a more holistic understanding of the bioeconomy concept applied to the forest sector, and identify a core set of potential contributions from social sciences for enhancing the bioeconomy in the forest sector. The paper focuses on studies within policy analysis, economics, and business administration disciplines. Thus it presents diverse disciplinary perspectives on the forest sector in a bioeconomy. Furthermore, innovation and sustainability have been identified as issues relevant to be approached across these disciplines. Politics increasingly introduces initiatives supporting a shift toward a bioeconomy aiming at a society relying strongly on renewable biological sources while achieving economic growth efficiently and sustainably. However, the agenda of bioeconomy comprises different “shades of green,” in the sense that different actors stress different aspects of the concept, when embracing it in communication. This conceptual paper aims to present policy and socioeconomic theoretical frameworks and research areas relevant for a more holistic understanding of the bioeconomy concept applied to the forest sector, and identify a core set of potential contributions from social sciences for enhancing the bioeconomy in the forest sector. The paper focuses on studies within policy analysis, economics, and business administration disciplines. Thus it presents diverse disciplinary perspectives on the forest sector in a bioeconomy. Furthermore, innovation and sustainability have been identified as issues relevant to be approached across these disciplines.

Consumers in today's world can perceive an additional benefit associated with responsible business practices and the sustainability of purchased products. However, in Scandinavian context, there is a lack of knowledge of consumer perceptions toward environmental and social sustainability of wood products. Our data on adult Finnish consumers (private end-users) (N=227) were collected during 2004–2007 as interview exit data from home retail centers selling building materials. The perceived environmental and social sustainability of wood products was investigated using exploratory factor analysis, and the phenomenon was observed to be a two-dimensional construct consisting of “General environmental and social sustainability” and “Specific social sustainability” reflecting strong consumer need for product safety. Logistic regression analysis revealed that the “General” dimension also explains the consumer's self-declared willingness to pay for sustainable wood products. The results also indicate that ...

The resources of currently dominant fossil fuels are limited, and their use causes greenhouse gas emissions. Consequently, the public interest within the European Union has changed toward using renewable energy. Finland’s forest industry is one of the world leaders in producing and utilizing wood-based bioenergy. Hence, it is of interest to evaluate new value-creation opportunities and the consequent challenges that face the Finnish sawmill industry. In order to identify the strategic resources that enable developing competitive advantages in the emerging bioenergy field, we applied the natural resource-based view of strategy to the sawmill industry. In the empirical part, qualitative semi-structured interviews with managers of 23 sawmills based on the Delphi methodology were conducted in two phases. We identified partnerships with local community heat plants as a strategic resource for providing new business opportunities, apart from raw material availability and existing technologies. Although the Finnish sawmills have a long tradition in energy production, most energy-related investments have been made only during the past decade, and the sawmills would be keenly interested in increasing the efficiency of using their by-products through new investments. In conclusion, the Finnish sawmill industry being the local producer of wood-based bioenergy can support meeting the ambitious national target for renewable energy production for 2020. However, the volatile bioenergy policy changes act as a major factor of uncertainty in predicting the future development of the business environment and further increase the risk level for future investments. Keywords: opportunities, challenges, bioenergy, Finnish sawmill industry. Received 27 December 2011, Revised 22 March 2012, Accepted 19 April 2011.

This study examines price dynamics in roundwood exports from Russia to Finland, the largest international roundwood trade flow within Europe. The analysis covers six main timber assortments; sawlog and pulpwood dimensions of pine, spruce and birch. The study period, starting from the devaluation of the rouble in August 1998, was characterized by a drastic increase in the volumes of Russian roundwood imported into Finland, and a coinciding structural change in the timber assortment distribution of the Finnish roundwood imports. A basic hypothesis of economic theory, the law of one price, was tested by using quarterly time series and methods of cointegration analysis. According to the cointegration tests, the prices of Finnish and Russian spruce sawlogs have moved closely together. Furthermore, the changes in the prices of spruce sawlogs in the Finnish roundwood market are reflected in the Russian prices and not vice versa. Regarding other timber assortments, price co-movement and consequent market...

Stress-related illnesses, such as mental, behavioral, and cardiovascular diseases, are common causes for sick-leave absences. It is generally assumed that burnout, the chronic stress syndrome, also leads to absenteeism and poor health, but this assumption has rarely been tested. The authors investigated the prospective effect of burnout on registered sick leaves and their causes in industrial employees. We collected the number of medically certified (> 3 days) absence episodes and their causes (according to the International Statistical Classification of Diseases-10 diagnostic categories) of 3,895 industrial employees from a company register during 1995 to 1998. Burnout was measured in 1996 with the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey, which defines burnout as a 3-dimensional syndrome consisting of components of exhaustion, cynicism, and lack of professional efficacy. In Poisson regression models, the total burnout score increased the risk for future all-cause absences after adjustment for age, sex, occupation, and baseline absence. Burnout increased the risk of future absences because of mental and behavioral disorders, diseases of the circulatory system, diseases of the respiratory system, and diseases of the musculoskeletal system. Of the separate components of burnout, exhaustion was strongly related to future diseases of the circulatory system, whereas cynicism was strongly related to future diseases of the digestive system. Other differentiated effects were also found. The results of this study show that burnout is related to increased risk of future illness. This implies that burnout prevention can reduce future absenteeism and has a major economic impact on work life and health care.

The aim of this longitudinal study was to recogmize the work characteristics and personal resourcesthat are associated with burnout symptoms in the long term. The empirical analyses are based onsample data (n = 174) from a larger survey in 1986 and from a 10-year follow up in 1776 conducted inan international industrial foresty enterprise. The participants were drawn from those worken inFinland, the home country of the enterprise, who responded to the questionnaires at both times. Theparticipants were classified into those having no burnout and those with serious burnout. In order tocompare the groups a multivariate analysis of variance and t-tests for two independent groups wereused. Four job-related and five organizational factors, 10 work environment hazards and threeindividual variables wereused as a predictors. Change variables were formed from the predictors. Allthe significant changes in work and personal resources during 10 years had shifted to the positivedirection in the no-bumout group, and to ...

This paper presents long-run exchange rate elasticities of Finnish newsprint and pulp export prices in the United Kingdom (UK) and Germany over the period 1980–94. The elasticities were estimated for a markup pricing model using Johansen's cointegration method. The magnitudes of the elasticity estimates obtained by imposing price homogeneity indicate that pass-through of exchange rate changes to export prices has been incomplete in both markets. For newsprint, the pass-through elasticity was 0.60 in the UK and 0.46 in Germany, which means that about one half of the changes in the exchange rates is reflected in prices as expressed in the destination countries' currencies and about a half in prices measured in Finnish markka. Instead, in pulp exports the pass-through elasticities differed from each other between the two destination countries more clearly than in newsprint exports, indicating a different pricing behaviour of Finnish pulp exporters in the UK and Germany when exchange rate changes. Pass-throug...

This paper presents a short‐term econometric model for the sawlog and pulpwood markets in Finland. More specifically, the effects of structural changes in the market on the success of short‐term market modelling are investigated. Wood prices and quantities traded are stationary. Therefore, valid statistical inference using the levels of these variables is possible. Pulpwood prices were found to be directly proportional to sawlog prices during the study period, and the cross‐price effects were not statistically significant. The results indicated that the price sensitivity of wood supply in Finland increased during the 1980s and early 1990s. Nationwide collective price agreements were found to have increased the level of pulpwood supply and demand from private forests, but to have had no effect on either supply of or demand for sawlogs. Due to a structural change in the 1970s, the models estimated for the whole period cannot be used for short‐term forecasting in the 1990s. Higher‐than‐annual frequency data ...